Actress Agam Rodberg Pays Tribute to Artist Yaacov Agam After His Death

After the death of Yaacov Agam at age 98, actress Agam Rodberg posted an emotional farewell on Instagram on Monday, June 22, 2026. Agam, a Israel Prize laureate and one of the world’s most influential Israeli artists, was closely associated with kinetic art.

Rodberg said their friendship began when she was 18, after she approached him at an event and told him she was named after him. “I told you I wanted us to be friends,” she wrote, adding that he agreed. Since then, she said, they became close friends and met in New York, Paris, London and Israel, as well as over dinners in her moshav.

“In a way that is very uncharacteristic of me, I mostly listened,” Rodberg wrote. “To me, I sat opposite a man with infinite wisdom, and I only wanted to absorb more and more.” She described him as one of the smartest and most special people she had ever known.

Rodberg said Agam “did not just create art. He invented a language,” one that connected color, movement, technology, spirit and Judaism. “I am proud to be named after you,” she wrote, adding that anyone named after her is, in a sense, also named after Yaacov Agam. She called him the most important Israeli artist in her view and ended by mourning “a beloved, one-of-a-kind friend.”