Raphael Perez is an Israeli artist known for his naive style paintings of Tel Aviv city. His work captures the essence of the city and its urban landscape, highlighting its iconic buildings and sites. Perez’s paintings create an idealized atmosphere in which reality is beautified and presented in a dreamy, fantastic manner.
Perez’s work is characterized by its vibrant colors and cheerful depiction of life in Tel Aviv. The streets in his paintings are full of people and loving couples hugging and kissing, while the boulevards are lined with well-kept trees and bushes. Perez’s work presents a vision of Israel’s future as a promising startup nation, with a beautiful, clean, and naive cityscape featuring towering skyscrapers reaching towards the sky.
Through his art, Perez portrays Tel Aviv as a modern and advanced city. His paintings are a celebration of the city’s unique character and its place as a cultural hub in Israel. Perez’s work is a testament to the beauty and vitality of Tel Aviv and its people.
In conclusion, Raphael Perez is an Israeli artist whose naive style paintings of Tel Aviv city capture the essence of the city and its urban landscape. His work presents an idealized vision of the city that is both beautiful and vibrant. Perez’s paintings are a celebration of Tel Aviv and its unique character as a modern and advanced city.
raphael perez is an Israeli artist known for his homoerotic gay art and colorful urban landscapes painted in a naïve style. He was born in Jerusalem in 1965 and has been living and working in Tel Aviv since 1995. Perez plays an important role in actively promoting LGBT art and culture in Tel Aviv.
Perez’s artistic career began when he was still living with women. He often painted heterosexual couples, but even then, one discerned Perez’s inner conflicts and attempt to grapple with the complexities of couplehood. His early work deals with the complexity of the relationship between a man and a woman, presenting an estranged relationship in which there is no connection between the two.
Peretz then moved to a stage of concealment, presenting men who do not reveal their faces and are debating about their sexual identity. He then created a large series of works dealing with the joy and idealization of homosexual life and love. These paintings are in a naïve style with pride flags in the background and loving couples on the streets of Tel Aviv, in lakes, in recreation places and iconic sites in the city.
Peretz also created a series of Israeli soldiers, expressing the meaning of the army to every Israeli citizen. In the years 1999-2004, he was one of the first artists in the world to create a large naïve series of works dealing with a same-sex family of two men raising a child. Another innovative subject was a series of men giving birth.
Over the years, Peretz also began to see the less beautiful side of homosexuality and the complexity that exists within the gay community. He moved to series dealing with an urban landscape with couples of all kinds. Is there anything specific you would like to know about his work?
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An interview with the painter Raphael Perez about an artist's book he created about his family, the Peretz family from 6 Nissan St. Kiryat Yuval Jerusalem
Question: Raphael Perez, tell me about the family artist book you created
Answer: I created close to 40 artist books, notebooks, diaries, sketch books and huge books. I dedicated one of the books to my dear family, a book in which I took a childhood photograph of my family, my parents and brothers and sisters.. I pasted the photographs inside a book (the photograph is 10 percent of the total painting) and I drew with acrylic paints, markers and ink on the book and the photograph, so that the image of the photograph was an inspiration to me Build the story that includes page by page..
Question: Tell me when you were born, where, and a little about your family
Answer: I was born on March 4, 1965 in the Kiryat Yuval neighborhood in Jerusalem
I have a twin brother named Miki Peretz and we are seven brothers and sisters, five boys and two girls
Question: Tell us a little about your parents
Answer: My parents were new immigrants from Morocco, both immigrated young.
My mother's name before the wedding was Alice - Aliza ben Yair and my father's name was Shimon Peretz,
My mother was born in the Atlas Mountains and was orphaned at a young age and was later adopted by my father's family at the age of 10, so that my mother and father spent childhood and adolescence together....
They had a beautiful and happy relationship but sometimes when they argued my mother would say "even when she was a child she was like that..." This means that their acquaintance and relationship dates back to childhood..
Question: What did your parents Shimon and Aliza Peretz work for?
Answer: My father, Shimon Perez, born in 1928 - worked in a building in his youth and then for thirty years worked as a receptionist at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem... My father's great love was actually art, he loved to draw as a hobby, write, read, solve crossword puzzles and research Regarding the issue of medicinal plants, as a breadwinner he could not fulfill his dream of becoming an artist, in order to support and feed seven children. But we are the next generation, his children are engaged in the world of creativity and education, a field in which both of my parents were engaged during their lives. My father died at the age of 69
My mother, Alice Aliza Perez, born in 1934, worked as an assistant to a kindergarten teacher, and later took care of a baby at home. She is a woman of wholehearted giving and caring for children and people, a warm, generous and humble woman.. and took care of us in our childhood for every emotional and physical deficiency.. My mother is right For the year 2023, the 89-year-old is partly happy and happy despite the difficulties of age.. May you have a long life..
My mother really loved gardening and nature and both of them together created a magnificent garden, my parents have a relatively large garden so they could grow many types of special and rare medicinal plants and my father even wrote a catalog (unpublished) of medicinal plants and we even had botany students come to us who were interested in the field... today they They also grow ornamental plants, and fruit trees...
Question: A book about the brothers and sisters
Answer: My elder brother David Perez repented in his mid-twenties.. He was a very sharp, opinionated, curious and very charismatic guy who brought many people back to repentance, and also helped people with problems through the yeshiva and the synagogue to return to the normal path of life, he died young at the age of 56
Hana Peretz: My lovely sister, raised eight children, worked in the field of education, a kindergarten teacher, and child care.
She has a very large extended family of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren...
My brother Avi (Abraham) Peretz studied in Israel at the University of Philosophy and Judaism, he married a wonderful woman named Mira Drumi, a nurse by profession, and together they had three wonderful children, when they moved to the United States in their mid-twenties, where my brother Avi Peretz completed his master's degree in education, worked in the field Education and for the last twenty years is A conservative rabbi
The fourth brother is Asher Peretz - a great man of the world, very fond of traveling and has been to magical places all over the world, engaged in the creation of jewelry with two children.
I am Rafi Peretz english raphael perez the fifth and after fifteen minutes my twin brother was born
My mother still gets confused and can't remember who was born first :-)
My twin brother Miki micky - Michael Peretz, a beloved brother (everyone is beloved), a talented industrial designer, he has three children, his wife Revital Peretz Ben, who is a well-known art curator, active and responsible for the art field in Tel Aviv, they are a dynamic and talented couple, full of talents and action
The lovely little sister Shlomit Peretz - has been involved in the Bezeq telephone company for almost three decades, and is there in management positions, raising her lovely and beloved child.
The art book I dedicated to my family is colorful, rich in details, shows a very intense childhood, happy, cheerful, colorful, ... We were taught to be diligent and to be happy in our part and to see the glass half full in life, to have emotional intelligence and to put the relationship and love at the center with self-fulfillment in work that will interest you us and you will give us satisfaction.
Each of us is different in our life decisions and my family is actually a mosaic of the State of Israel that includes both religious and secular people from the entire political spectrum who understand that the secret to unity is mutual respect for each other... when my mother these days is also the family glue in everyone's gatherings on Shabbat and holidays..
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Raphael Perez, also known as Rafi Peretz, is an Israeli painter who
explores his personal and sexual identity through his flower paintings. He created a series of flower paintings from 1995 to 1998, when he was in his early thirties and still in relationships with women, despite feeling gay. His flower paintings reflect his emotional turmoil and his struggle with his sexual orientation. He painted two flowers, one blooming and one wilting, to represent the contrast and conflict between his heterosexual relationships and his true self. He also painted single flowers or two flowers in their prime, to express his longing for a harmonious relationship that matches his nature. He chose sunflowers, white lilies, and red lilies as symbols of expression, purity, and joy, respectively. He painted from real flowers, using different styles and light to create drama and mood. Perez’s paintings of the flower couples are minimalist and focused on the theme of the complex relationship. He omitted any background or context, leaving only the canvas and the drawing of the flower couples. In some of the paintings, he added a very airy abstract surface with thin oil paints that give an atmosphere of watercolors. He also made drawings of flowers in ink, markers and gouache on paper. Later on, he created large acrylic paintings of flowers and still life. Perez’s flower paintings are not mere illustrations or decorations. They are autobiographical and psychological expressions of his inner state and his struggle with his sexuality. He wanted to reveal his loneliness, distress and concealment through these paintings, and to connect with people who are in a similar situation. He deliberately chose only two flowers and no more to intensify the engagement in the charged and complex relationship. Perez also painted and drew couples of men and women with charged psychological states, as well as states of desire for connection and realization of a heterosexual relationship that did not succeed. He used hyperrealism and expressive styles to convey his frozen and calculated state, as well as his mental stress. He used harsh lighting to create contrast and drama, with one side very bright and the other side darker. Perez was influenced by some of the famous artists who painted flowers, such as Van Gogh, who also used sunflowers as a symbol of expression. He also used white lilies and red lilies to convey freshness, cleanliness, purity, color, joy, movement, eruption, and splendor. Perez also painted some single flowers or two flowers in their prime, to show his aspiration for a future where he will have a harmonious relationship. Today, he is 58 years old and in a happy relationship for 10 years with his partner Assaf Henigsberg. He is surrounded by female friends and soulmates and not conflicted with heterosexual relationships as he used to be. He occasionally paints flowers in pots to symbolize home, stability, and peace. Sometimes I paint flowers in pots, which represent home, stability, and solid ground for me. I don’t paint just a couple of flowers, but pots full of flowers that overflow with life. This means that we also have a supportive network of family, friends, and peers around us. We live in a rich, supportive, and protective world. These paintings are a personification of my psychological state, when I had no words to express my feelings to myself. The painting began In 35 years of my creation (starting in 1998), you can read more about how my art and style evolved over time. Perez’s flower paintings are a unique and extraordinary artistic creation that reveals his personal journey and his sexual identity. His work is honest, expressive, and emotional, as well as beautiful and vibrant.
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