Ofer Livne Kafri

Born in Nahalal in 1948. Raised from an early age in the home of his father, the sculptor Mordechai Kafri (Wolfsdorf). He later became one of the most prominent sculptors in Israel, a noble and generous man. The combination of art and agricultural work in his life was also present in two other people in the family: his father, the poet Yitzhak Levena Blinki, who was killed in the war, and his maternal grandfather, the writer Zvi Levena Lieberman. The world of art was an important and inseparable part of his childhood. At the age of 63, he returned to painting and began studying with the painters Iris Sinatra, Michael Halak, and especially with Amnon Yohas. In 2016, he retired from his job at the University of Haifa (professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature) and since then he has devoted most of his time to art, which is very different in essence from academic work. This process also reflects a transition from the precise realistic painting of his school days to other dimensions of a personal nature.

In personal retrospect

I believe that I always had, even unconsciously, a strong desire to paint. For various reasons (the academic work is only one of them), I only started painting continuously from the age of 63. I mainly followed in the footsteps of the artists I studied with: Iris Sinatra, Michael Halak and especially with Amnon Yohs, with whom I continued to study intensively even after I retired in 2016. Later I chose to go in independent directions. From then until today, painting has been the main, significant and intense occupation of my life. Looking back, I recognize a very diverse world both in terms of perceptions and in the technical aspects, which I see as a long and complex path of experimentation and wondering. In this way, not every result may be perceived as desirable, but overall there are also (in the view of ‘after the fact’) different dimensions of artistic development that are not separated from the private and human aspects. It seems to me that recently I am in a period where I am much more attentive to myself in the creative process.