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Artist who threw his work into the Hudson wins Israel Prize By Dana Gilerman For three whole hours on Wednesday, Education Minister Yuli Tamir tried to reach artist Pinhas Cohen-Gan on the phone to inform him that he had been awarded this year's Israel Prize. The fax bearing the news had already gone out to the newspapers, but the artist himself was unaware of the decision. In any event, from his standpoint, this was certainly a cause for celebration. Cohen-Gan, who generally feels that he is very isolated and his work unappreciated and who has complained extensively about being discriminated against, has finally been given official national recognition. Advertisement Unlike many artists who regard the Israel Prize with acerbic criticism and considerable cynicism, Cohen-Gan has a high respect for this award. "In my view, the Israel Prize is not an award from the establishment. It is a much higher award, an intellectual prize. "It is a prize of the faith of both Judaism and the Jewish people," he adds. "It represents me, my family in Israel and abroad, entire Jewish communities. I feel sad that my parents are not alive to see that finally I did amount to something." Born in Morocco in 1942, Cohen-Gan arrived in Israel in 1949. He grew up in Kiryat Bialik, served in the Israel Defense Forces' Nahal Brigade, lived in Jerusalem, studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, and was injured in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market in 1968. He is not as well known to the general public as artists like Menashe Kadishman, Yigal Tumarkin and Dani Karavan. However, his importance in the fields of conceptual art and Israeli painting, especially of the avant-garde variety, is immense. "Cohen-Gan has contributed to Israeli culture an original lexicon of images some of which have long become symbols that have been appropriated consciously and unconsciously by other artists whom he has deeply influenced," the adjudicators - curators Yigal Zalmona, Galia Bar-Or and Yona Fischer - wrote in their decision to award him the Israel Prize for Painting. "For instance, the image of the human individual expressed as a schema of every human being who is persecutor and persecuted, who is wounded, sick and victimized." In the 1970s, a stormy political period for Israeli art, Cohen-Gan created conceptual and symbolic installations that have already become classics. His most famous is his Dead Sea project where he installed a long plastic sleeve that carried fresh water from Ein Feshkha to the Dead Sea and in which fish actually swam. Since then, he has continued to produce and create, as well as publish books that are the fruits of his research. For many years he traveled around the globe, starting off in Europe and later moving to New York City: "I was in constant search of artistic innovations. It was a nomadic existence that had its ups and downs. I have been a sort of hobo in Paris, New York, London and Jerusalem and have spent years researching and creating." His artistic activities have gelled into an impressive biography that includes over 500 group exhibitions and 50 one-person shows, as well as a life's-work award from the Education Ministry and the Dizengoff Prize, which he received in 1995. Asked how many paintings he has produced so far, he replies, "Over 120,000, most of which I destroyed for lack of space." He removed some of those paintings from a shipping container and tossed them into New York City's Hudson River, before his return to Israel. The second time he destroyed his works was in 1999, when he was forced to leave his studio in Tel Aviv and was unable to find space for his paintings. "Today," he notes, "I have about a thousand paintings and about 5,000 smaller works." "Pinhas is one of those artists who never married and who decided to devote their lives to art," says curator Naomi Aviv, who submitted his candidacy to the Israel Prize Committee. "Such artists are constantly in doubt as to whether they might be making a mistake, as to whether what they are doing might not really become accepted. Prizes like this one reinforce the importance of, and justify, their sacrifice. In Pinhas' case, the granting of the award is a particularly moving event, because he was an avant-garde artist." Over the past few years, Cohen-Gan has not participated in any exhibitions. He excitedly relates that he recently completed work on a new series of paintings: "the pinnacle of all my work." However, until he finds a suitable location for the exhibition, he will not display the series. Meanwhile, one can see selections from his paintings in an exhibition that opens today at the Givon Gallery in Tel Aviv. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Auschwitz gimmick U.K. Tory chief draws fire for calling school visits to Auschwitz a gimmick. 5 Stops in Galilee Rock hares, peach orchards, a taste of the past, and walking the Jesus trail.

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