Yaacov Agam, pioneering Israeli artist and Israel Prize laureate, dies at 98

Yaacov Agam, one of Israel’s most celebrated artists and a recipient of the Israel Prize, has died at the age of 98. His coffin will lie in state at a memorial ceremony in front of the Agam Museum in Rishon LeZion on Monday from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., and the funeral will leave from the military cemetery in Rehovot at 5:00 p.m. The shiva will be held this week at the Agam Museum.

Agam received the Israel Prize only last year. In its citation, the committee said his work reflected “a long-standing contribution to Israeli and international art for seven decades,” and credited him with breaking the boundaries of traditional visual art and creating new languages of kinetic art and op art. It also said the key innovation in his work was the idea of internal change, both within the artwork itself and from the viewer’s shifting perspective.

The committee added that his works combine visual and musical elements in motion through space and time, presenting a dynamic and constantly renewed reality. It said his art expresses the belief that art must be as moving and changeable as reality itself.

Agam was born in Rishon LeZion, studied at Bezalel in Jerusalem and later in Zurich, Switzerland, and settled in Paris in the early 1950s. He was among the first Israeli artists to gain broad international recognition, and for more than seven decades he developed a distinctive style built on movement, light, color and constant transformation. His works were shown at major museums including the Guggenheim in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and were installed in public spaces around the world. Among his best-known works are the Fire and Water fountain at Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv, the Thousand Gates at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, the kinetic fountain in La Défense in Paris, and the world’s largest menorah on Fifth Avenue in New York.

The Agam Museum opened in 2017 in Rishon LeZion as a joint initiative of the city and the artist, with the aim of preserving his legacy, advancing research on his work, and presenting his artistic vision in Israel and abroad.