Ophrah Shemesh


Ophrah Shemesh is an Israeli-American artist, best known for her intense, existentially themed oil and tempera paintings of women and men.

Early life and career

Born in Haifa, Israel, to Albert Shemesh and Carmella-Daisy Levy. Albert was an important Lehi activist in Iraq, before the creation of the state of Israel. Shemesh studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.
In 1973, Israeli filmmaker and director Amos Gitai cast her in a short film, My Mother at the Seashore, and later gave her a leading role in Golem, the Spirit of Exile , also starring Hanna Schygulla, Sam Fuller, and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Shemesh attended the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture from 1979-1983. In 1986, she was one of a new group of teachers brought in by then dean, Bruce Gagnier, and has been a member of the faculty since. Shemesh has also taught and spoken in a variety of other programs and symposia, including the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts, Kremer Pigments, the International School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture, the Sicily Artist in Residence Program, and the College de France.
Shemesh’s work is in the permanent collection of Collezione Maramotti and appears in Mario Diacono, Archetypes and Historicity: Painting and Other Radical Forms, 1995-2007, Ophrah Shemesh: Silence of the Sirens, 2008-2011, and Max Tomasinelli, Portraits of Artists.

Solo exhibitions