Pastoralism Instead of Ideology, an Exhibition Examines the Collapse of the Kibbutz Vision

Dozens of artists are taking part in the large exhibition, “The Movement: Kibbutz in Israeli Art,” at the Ramat Gan Museum, which feels more like a requiem for the pioneering kibbutz vision than a celebration of it. Somewhat like “Shared Sleep,” presented about 20 years ago at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion at the Tel Aviv Museum, “The Movement” seeks to examine kibbutz life and the cult of labor, agriculture and industry that once stood at its center, alongside the processes of privatization, globalization and criticism of the privileges enjoyed by the kibbutzim.

Curated by Yaniv Shapira, “The Movement” also includes masterpieces from the collection of the Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod, where Shapira served as chief curator until 2023. It opens with Yechiel Shemi’s sculpture “The Well” from Kibbutz Kabri, one of the most important sculptors in Israel. Shemi gave monumental and intimate expression to the forces of human beings seeking to shape nature, as well as to the sublime in the landscape.

Alongside it are works by classic kibbutz artists, including Uri Reisman, who depicted highly colored abstract landscapes, and Yohanan Simon and Aharon Giladi, who created family and agricultural idylls. Yet Simon and Giladi later left the kibbutz in anger, feeling they were not understood. Indeed, being an artist in a kibbutz was not easy. The socialist ideal struggled to justify allocating time and resources to art, which was seen as a luxury, and many had to fight for a studio, materials and time to create. One example is Moshe Kupferman, one of the giants of Israeli painting, whose large abstract painting hangs at the entrance to the exhibition. In Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot, Kupferman became an “art branch,” a professional artist whom the kibbutz recognized as such and even took pride in.

Also on display are works by artists who were not clearly kibbutz members. Yair Garbuz, who died a month ago, was for a short time in his youth a member of Kibbutz Kfar HaHoresh. His work “They Closed the Community Centers and Went to Make War” (1982), a wild three-dimensional collage of amateur crafts, posters and photographs, was created against the backdrop of the Lebanon War, but it feels chillingly current in light of the rising violence and the war in the north.

The contemporary works also expose the kibbutz’s problems. For example, the hyper-realistic paintings by Uzi Katz, who was an outside Mizrahi child in an Ashkenazi kibbutz environment, present childhood memories that seem to have darkened over the years. The swimming pool and bathers paintings by Vered Nahmani and Yoni Gold evoke images associated with kibbutz privilege. And the dark side of the kibbutz emerges in Adva Drori’s nightmarish textile embroideries, which deal with the traumas of shared sleeping arrangements and separation from parents.

The exhibition ends with a playful gesture by Gabriela Willenz from Hanita, who created a colorful rejection letter from collages of kibbutz protocols explaining why they would not support artists. Visitors can even take a copy home and frame it. It also settles scores with kibbutz sculpture, one of Shemi’s metal sculptures is reworked in colorful mattresses, and the serious masculine sculpture becomes a cheerful playground structure. Like the kibbutz itself, the ideology has disappeared, and what remains is rural pastoralism for a family Saturday stroll.