Born in 1926, Jaroslav, Galicia, Poland Kupferman spent World War II in the Ural and Kazakhstan internment camps. The only member of his family to survive, he immigrated to Israel in 1948 and helped establish Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot (Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz), where he continues to live and work today. .
Awards: 1971 Schiff Prize of Haifa Municipality
1972 Sandberg Prize for an Israeli artist, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
2001 Israel Prize
Moshe Kupferman creates powerful abstract paintings. He infuses beauty and life into a personal landscape shaped by his experience as a Holocaust survivor. he spent most of his adult life working and living in Israel. His works the mainstay of his oeuvre; filled as they are with strong horizontal and vertical markings in oil and graphite. Kupferman describes these powerful and dramatic grids as the demarcations of places intersecting with the abstract representations of human presences. Kupferman’s work appears in the public collections of the Solomon R. Through Kupferman's enduring association with the kibbutz movement and his commitment to the activity of painting as an essential daily labor, the artist effectively integrates an aesthetic dimension into his philosophy of life. “First I put in emotion and expression. Then I cover it up. Then I put in silence.” Art critic Arturo Schwarz regards Kupferman's aesthetic of silence—the silence of memories and restrained emotions—as an effort to conceal, the better to reveal. The artist alternately paints and wipes away layer upon layer. He relies upon violet, black, and white pigment, and occasionally green, imbuing each color with its own associations. Like the changing sky, Kupferman's subtle manipulation of color emphasizes the transitional character of events, emotions, and life.
