Dov Feigin


Dov Feigin was an Israeli sculptor.

Biography

Dov Feigin was born in 1907 in Luhansk, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. His father was a tailor. Feigin attended public Ukraine school as well as a Talmud Torah school. In 1920, Feigin's family moved to Gomel, where he became a member of the Socialist-Zionist movement Hashomer Hatzair. In 1924, he was arrested and imprisoned for three years. In 1927, after his release, he emigrated to the Mandate Palestine and was one of the founding members of the Afikim Kibbutz.
In 1933, Feigin was accepted to the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, France, where he studied as a traditional sculptor. His works from that period were mostly traditional statues in stone. In 1937, Feigin returned to Tel Aviv.
In 1948, he joined an artistic group called “Ofakim Hadasim” founded earlier that year by Yosef Zarizky. The group was heavily inspired by the European Modern Art Movement.

Art career

In 1956, influenced by this group, Feigins work transformed to be more abstract. He began to use metal in constructing his sculptures. Like many of the “New Horizons” artists, his works were influenced by the Israeli Canaanites movement. Works like 1956’s "Bird" and “Alomot” or 1957’s “Ladderes” present a liniar abstract structure.
In 1948 and 1962, he attended the Venice Biennale.
In 1966, he designed a relief inside Yad Kennedy, a memorial to John F. Kennedy in Jerusalem.
One of his most famous sculptures, Animal, is now in the Lola Beer Ebner Sculpture Garden of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Awards