Internationally known Israeli artist Yaacov Agam has died at the age of 98. A recipient of the Israel Prize, he began creating art at 12 and became one of Israel’s most recognized figures in the global art world. He lived in Paris for many years but continued to visit Israel, work, and teach there. He is survived by three children.
Agam was born Yaacov Gibstein in May 1928 in Rehovot. His father was Rabbi Yehoshua Gibstein. In 1945, British authorities detained him for about eight months on suspicion of involvement in an underground movement. After his release, he studied at Bezalel in Jerusalem, then moved to Zurich in 1949, where he encountered constructivist art and Bauhaus ideas. He later settled in Paris, drew closer to surrealist artists, taught at the Jewish Agency seminary, and lectured at academic institutions in Israel and the United States, including the Hebrew Academy in California and Harvard.
His best-known works date from the 1960s and include the Dizengoff Square fountain “Water and Fire,” removed in 2016 when the square was lowered, as well as “Agam Salon” created for the Élysée Palace and the facade of the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv. Art scholars described his work as combining Jewish kabbalistic imagery with abstraction and a repeated use of opposites that resolve into synthesis.
Agam won numerous honors, including a 1963 award for artistic research from the São Paulo Biennial, the Sandberg Prize from the Israel Museum in 1972, honorary citizenship of Alabama in 1976, and a UNESCO education prize in 1996. In 2012, reports said his works had unexpectedly appeared in Tehran’s art museum. His son Ron said the pieces were transferred to senior Iranian officials in 1977, before the Islamic Revolution, when the family was in Iran and sometimes hosted by the royal family. Agam himself told News 12 that his works fit Islamic worldview and said he did not believe they would be destroyed because they were culturally valuable. His coffin will be placed Monday at the Agam Museum plaza in Rehovot, the funeral will leave from the military cemetery plaza in Rehovot at 5 p.m., and the shiva will be held at the Agam Museum in Rehovot.
