The aliyah art of Avraham Vofsi

Australian artist Avraham Vofsi held “almost no ideas about Israel” before visiting the country in 2022. A year later – and a month before the country was upended by October 7 – he moved there.

Since then, Vofsi’s work has largely centred on the experience of living in Israel. His most recent oils issue forth songs of loss, pain, and beauty.

An encounter with his paintings evokes the startling faith of Shaul Tchernichovsky in his Hebrew poem Ani Ma’Amin (I Believe). “I still believe in mankind /in its spirit, great and bold.”

When Vofsi, now 35 , became a 2022 Archibald Prize finalist for his audacious John Safran as David and Goliath, he had only been painting for a few years, developing a classical realist style that engages with archetypes and mythology, and often emits an absorbing emotionality.

He relates of his former life in Australia, ‘I always felt very out of place: too loud, too excited, too ready to feel things…When I arrived here, apart from coming home as a Jew, maybe even more powerful … [was the feeling that] the society fit me so well.’

Vofsi has just completed HaAliyah: Visions of the Rise, a monumental series exploring the seismic aftermath of October 7. Each of the paintings is abundant with references notably to the theme of Aliyah (ascent) and the related word alut (cost).

The series will be on display in Australia at gala events to celebrate 100 years of Technion in Melbourne and Sydney in early December.

Vofsi revealed the background to a selection of these works for The Jewish Independent:

Erez Eshel at Zikim

Vofsi was approached with a request to paint Erez Eshel by a friend working on a book pairing artists and poets with stories of heroic individuals. Eshel is a founder of the Mechina leadership academies and a Lieutenant Colonel in the reserves. He was in and out of army service and had little time to sit for a portrait. Until then, Vofsi’s preferred method of portraiture was highly collaborative but Eshel’s spirit and story were characterised by decisive action. He expected clarity of direction from the artist painting him. Vofsi attributes this encounter to developing his sense of assertiveness, "Israelis expect you to say what you want … which is basically the opposite of all my Australian training."