Michael Kovner

b. 1948, Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh; lives and works in Jerusalem

As a youth, Michael Kovner studied painting with artist Yohanan Simon. In 1972, he flew to New York, where he studied under artist Philip Guston. In the late 1980s, he began painting the landscapes of Israel. 

His paintings on the truck are part of a larger series, The Dancers, on which he has been working for the past two years. On one side of the truck, he focused on parting with life and acceptance of its cyclicality. The painting on the other side of the truck was inspired by German choreographer Pina Bausch's dance piece Orpheus and Eurydice, about fair Orpheus who, thanks to his gift of music, was granted the rare opportunity to descend into Hades to retrieve his beloved Eurydice but failed in his task.

​

Kovner's works have been presented in many important solo and group exhibitions in leading venues in Israel and abroad, including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; The Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan; Haifa Museum of Art; Ashdod Art  Museum; Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod; Jerusalem Artists' House; Bineth Art Gallery, Tel Aviv; Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv; The Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, Tel Aviv University; and in various galleries internationally. His works are in many museum and private collections in Israel and around the world. In 2006, he completed a six-year work on the graphic novel Ezekiel's World, and in 2015 the Jerusalem Khan Theater staged the play Ezekiel, based on the novel.