Open Field, Selection from the Dubi Shiff Collection, Nachum Gutman Museum of Art (link to catalog)

The Dubi Shiff Art Collection was shaped by a deep passion for figurative-realist painting and drawing. What started with spontaneous acquisitions by Haim Shiff evolved under his son, Dubi Shiff, into an extensive collection that presents a clear aesthetic position within the Israeli art world. This choice stands out against the backdrop of local art history, where since the 1950s, figurativism was sidelined in favor of abstraction and conceptual art. In this artistic climate, the Dubi Shiff Collection seeks to restore the centrality and validity of figurative painting as a significant and vital path.

Exhibiting the collection at the Nahum Gutman Museum of Art weaves a dialogue with Gutman’s work, which was based on three key elements: the human image, an identifiable place, and a narrative. These fundamental characteristics also resonate in the works on view here – not as a nostalgic return to the past, but through a contemporary and self-aware perspective.

The works in the exhibition are not tied together by a uniform style or a single ideology, but rather by a shared belief in the power of the image to carry memory, formulate identity, and tell a story. Thus, the exhibition offers a fresh perspective on the place of figurative painting today as a living, complex, and relevant artistic language.

The dialogue generated in this exhibition is not only between the past and the present but also between different positions of power: between a private collector and a public institution; between a distinct aesthetic taste and a critical field; between the aspiration to change hierarchies and the risk of creating alternative ones.

This leads to the question: Does a collection that focuses on figurative art as a definitive stance expand the field or limit it? Does it invite true pluralism, or does it formulate a counter-canon?

The Dubi Shiff Collection, then, is not only an aesthetic entity but also an arena of symbolic struggle. It operates out of a clear desire to influence the discourse and restore painting to its central status, while simultaneously illustrating how private collecting serves as a mechanism that shapes the field. Its presentation at the Nahum Gutman Museum of Art is not only a tribute to a figurative tradition but also an event that embodies how art, as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu tells us, is always both a space for the production of meaning and an arena of struggle for recognition.

Featured Artists: Amnon David Ar, Elena Rotenberg, Ella Amitay Sadovsky, Fatma Shanan, Hadas Levi, Inge Pries Kantor, Matan Ben Cnaan, Maya Zack, Maia Zer, Michael Argov, Muntean/Rosenblum, Nurit David, Samah Shihadi, Shir Moran, Sigal Tsabari, Tali Milstein, Vadim Stepanov, and Zohar Fraiman

Monica Lavi
Curator of exhibition