I

sraeli artist Yigal Ozeri’s large-scale 
paintings draw the viewer in with 
their beauty, detail and sometimes 
dreamy nature settings. Brush with 
Reality — the name of the exhibit 
at the Flint Institute of Arts — is 
well-chosen.
Ozeri’s artworks may seem to be 
photographs but, on closer inspec-
tion, they open up a more detailed, 
intimate emotional perspective of his 
models. Many are beautiful women 
who revel in their environments — a 
rainforest, beach, city street. One 
of their common elements is their 
self-assertion — “This is me in my place,
” 
they seem to say.
Ozeri is a leading photorealist artist 
whose works have been exhibited through-
out the U.S., Europe, China, Mexico and 
Israel, where he was born in 1958. His 
paintings are part of the permanent collec-
tions of the Whitney Museum of American 
Art, the Jewish Museum in New York, the 
Albertina in Vienna, the Tel Aviv Museum 
of Art and the 
Flint Institute of 
Arts, where his 
current exhibition 
will be available 
through Jan. 2, 
2022.
Photorealism 
is an artistic pro-
cess in which the 
artist creates and 
manipulates dig-
ital images from 
a camera that are 
then reproduced 
on paper or canvas, providing the base 
for painting. Ozeri says that he “recreates 
the image in the computer to better fit his 
inner reality” and then paints so that he 
“erases the photography.
”
Ozeri studied art at the Institute of 
Plastic Arts in Bat Yam from 1977-1980, 

when he says that most Israeli artists leaned 
toward abstract art, and portraits were not 
held in high esteem. He was an important 
figure in the Israeli art world, founding 
the Meimad Art School in Tel Aviv, and 
received the Minister of Education Prize 
for Young Artists in 1989. 
In 1991, Ozeri moved to New York. The 
art market wasn’t doing well and in con-
trast to his prominence in Israel, he strug-
gled to find his place. He found a studio 
near a branch of the Museum of Modern 
Art and helped co-found an arts complex. 
A visit to the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in 
New York City exposed Ozeri to photore-
alism for the first time, and he eventually 
began exploring this hybrid art form. 
Initially, he used his children as portrait 
models and then began to focus on women 
in nature and forests.
According to Ozeri, most photorealist 
artists paint landscapes and still life paint-
ings, but he chose women because of their 
beauty and vitality with deep connections 
to nature. One of his best-known portraits 
is one of Lizzy Jagger, daughter of Mick 
Jagger, in which he chose to retain the view 
of her smoking for its special visual effect. 
Untitled: Territory depicts a beautiful 
Israeli soldier — Shely Ben-Joseph — smil-
ing and luxuriating on a beach. She wears 
her uniform, and Ozeri admiringly speaks 

of her role as a supervisor in the army’s 
cyber defense unit. 
While initially concentrating on portraits 
of women, his daughter, Shear Ozeri, who 
works with him, suggested that he consider 
New York as representing another kind of 
beauty. He began a series focusing on food 
vendors and other people on the streets 
of New York. It was a big change to “paint 
reality,
” he said during a tour of Brush with 
Reality.
As the place where he spent the devel-
opmental years of his art career, Ozari says 
that New York “defined him as an artist 
and human.
”
The Flint Institute of Arts previously 
included Ozeri’s work in a 2018 exhibit 
titled From Lens to Eye to Hand: Photorealism 
1969 to Today, which explored the 50-year 
history of photorealism. “In that show, Yigal 
Ozeri’s work was part of the section featur-
ing the new generation of photorealists,
” 
Tracee Glab, curator of collections and exhi-
bitions at the Flint Institute of Arts, said. 
“Our audience really loved his work, 
which stood out among the others in the 
show. In speaking with his dealer Louis 
Meisel, we were made aware that a ret-
rospective of his works was available. We 
jumped at the chance to have his work 
back here, but in a more thorough presen-
tation.
” 

A Brush with Reality

Flint Institute of Arts features Israeli photorealist Yigal Ozeri. 

SHARI S. COHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Details

Brush with Reality will 
be featured at the 
Flint Institute of Arts 
(Flintarts.org) through 
Jan. 2, 2022. The 
museum is about a 
one-hour drive, assum-
ing good weather and 
traffic conditions, for 
those living in south-
east Oakland County. 

Yigal Ozeri

PHOTOS COURTESY OF FLINT INSTITUTE OF ARTS

Untitled: 
Territory, 2012, 
oil on paper, 
from a private 
collection

ARTS&LIFE
ART

42 | OCTOBER 14 • 2021 

