Yishai jusidman biography for kids
Yishai Jusidman
A Mexican artist of Jewish heritage, Yishai Jusidman explores the history of paint and painting, and presents it through a contemporary lens. Since the late 80’s, he has developed series of works that construct around specific problems of contemporary painting in a critical and innovative fashion.
Born in 1963 in Mexico City, Mexico, Jusidman currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts (B.F.A.), New York Studio School of Drawing (Painting and Sculpture) and New York University (M.A.). He exhibited in venues worldwide, including Americas Society, New York, MUAC, Mexico City, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York, SMAK in Ghent, Belgium, MEIAC in Badajoz, Spain, and MARCO in Monterrey, Mexico (2002–3). He also showed at the 2014 SITE Santa Fe Biennial; the 2001 Venice Biennale; ARS 01, KIASMA, Helsinki, Finland (2001); and Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Miami Art Museum (2000–2003).
Among Jusidman's notable series is Prussian Blue from 2017, a series of paintings rendered almost exclusively in one of the earliest artificially developed pigments used by European painters—Prussian Blue. At the same time, the chemical compound that makes up this pigment happens to be related to the Prussic acid in Zyklon B, the poisonous product used by the Nazis in gas chambers. In these works, the artist re-engages with these stains that still remain in gas chambers, serving as quiet, disturbing, and palpable reminders.
Featured image: Yishai Jusidman - The Economist Shuffle #21, 2008 (detail). Oil on wood with gilded frame. 28 1/2 × 30 1/2 in. 72.4 × 77.5 cm. Photo courtesy Galería OMR
Mexico City, 1963
Lives and works in Los Angeles
Since the late 1980s, Yishai Jusidman has developed a series of works that critically and innovatively engage with specific challenges in contemporary painting. Jusidman contends that the pictorial experience of the 20th century was shaped by artificial dichotomies (such as Figurative/Abstraction, Form/Content, Painting/Concept, Realism/Expressionism) that create the illusion of the non-practice nature of pre-modern naturalism.
To deconstruct these dichotomies, Jusidman employs multiple pictorial techniques rooted in the history of painting. He seamlessly connects portraiture, landscape, and still-life with elements of geometrism, gesturalism, and minimalism. This synthesis blends analytical rigor with manual expressiveness, effectively dismantling artificial boundaries. Jusidman revives the potential for figurative representation, naturalism, and imagery to coexist within painting, highlighting their compelling possibilities.
Mexico City, 1963
Lives and works in Los Angeles
Since the late 1980s, Yishai Jusidman has developed a series of works that critically and innovatively engage with specific challenges in contemporary painting. Jusidman contends that the pictorial experience of the 20th century was shaped by artificial dichotomies (such as Figurative/Abstraction, Form/Content, Painting/Concept, Realism/Expressionism) that create the illusion of the non-practice nature of pre-modern naturalism.
To deconstruct these dichotomies, Jusidman employs multiple pictorial techniques rooted in the history of painting. He seamlessly connects portraiture, landscape, and still-life with elements of geometrism, gesturalism, and minimalism. This synthesis blends analytical rigor with manual expressiveness, effectively dismantling artificial boundaries. Jusidman revives the potential for figurative representation, naturalism, and imagery to coexist within painting, highlighting their compelling possibilities.
Yishai Jusidman
Yishai Jusidman, a Mexican artist of Jewish heritage currently based in Los Angeles, explores the history of paint and painting, and presents it through a contemporary lens. His noteworthy solo exhibitions include Prussian Blue, Americas Society, New York (2013) and MUAC, Mexico City (2016–17); Paintworks, Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City (2009); The Economist Shuffle, Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York (2007); and mutatis mutandis/Working Painters, which traveled to SMAK in Ghent, Belgium, MEIAC in Badajoz, Spain, and MARCO in Monterrey, Mexico (2002–3). His paintings have been featured in such international group exhibitions as the 2014 SITE Santa Fe Biennial; the 2001 Venice Biennale; ARS 01, KIASMA, Helsinki, Finland (2001); and Ultrabaroque: Aspects of Post-Latin American Art, which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Miami Art Museum (2000–2003). Jusidman’s work is often included in panoramic exhibitions of Mexican contemporary art, as in The Era of Discrepancy, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2007); Echo—Contemporary Art from Mexico, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2003); and Soleils du Mexique, Petit Palais, Paris (2000).
Yishai Jusidman: Judaism Unbound Episode 157 - Painting The Unpaintable
Yishai Jusidman, a painter whose exhibition Prussian Blue features a series of works looking at the Holocaust, questions of memory, and representation — joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg to discuss his work and the thinking behind it. [1] This episode is the second in a series of episodes on art, creativity, preservation, and museums, brought to you in partnership with The Council of American Jewish Museums.
For video and images of Prussian Blue to view as you listen to the episode, scroll down this page.
(0:01 - 13:56): To begin the episode, Jusidman looks back at the events that led him to lean into the fraught arena of painting “about” the Holocaust, the works that became the exhibition Prussian Blue. First, he reflects on visiting an exhibition by Luc Tuymans, [2] and how its understanding of representing the Holocaust (and whether one can ever succeed at doing so) differed from his own. [3] He then explores a series of discoveries he made about the pigment “Prussian Blue,” its physical presence in some death camps as a result of chemical reactions with the gases used in the extermination chambers, and his idea to utilize the pigment as a tangible way of connecting to the Holocaust itself. Jusidman also explores, more broadly, the role that art can play in representing precisely those elements of the past and present that are hardest for us capture in words.
(13:57 - 27:05): Jusidman offers a critique of pedagogies that attempt to create an experience that “feels like” being in the Holocaust. Looking in particular at a methodology of providing visitors with a passport of someone who experienced the Holocaust, to Jusidman, it feels a bit manipulative. [4] He recognizes that such approaches come from a place of positive intentions, geared toward the important goal of sparking empathy for those who were murdered, but still believes that