Beloosesky Gallery is interested in purchasing paintings by Yohanan Simon.
Please call (917) 749-4557 or email us at info@beloosesky.com
Yohanan Simon (Hans Yohanan) was an Israeli painter born in Berlin in 1905. He studied in Frankfurt with Max Beckmann, at the Art Academy in Munich. In 1928, Simon won a scholarship from the Jewish community in Berlin to study painting in France. In Paris he studied at the Ecole Beaux-Arts. He then moved to Toulon, a port town in southern France, to study with André Derain and in 1931 mounted his first solo exhibition there. Later that year, he moved to Paris where he juggled studying at the École des Beaux Arts, exhibiting at the Salon d'Autumne and Salon des Tuileries, and working as a graphic designer for two French magazines: Vu and Les Annales. In 1934, Simon was sent to work for Vogue in New York and while there worked with the artist Diego Riviera on his huge mural in Rockefeller Center. He moved back to Paris in 1935.
Yohanan Simon immigrated to Palestine in 1936. He was a member of Kibbutz Gan-Shmuel where he worked as a manual laborer. The kibbutz allowed him to paint one day a week. Yohanan Simon was active in the Haganah and participated in the War of Liberation. With the outbreak of the War of Independence in 1948, he was recruited to the camouflage department of the Palmach (the elite fighting force of the Haganah), and helped found the New Horizons Group alongside 16 other artists.
In 1953 he left the kibbutz, moved to Tel Aviv and opened a studio. While in Tel Aviv the Israeli artist, architect and art theorist Marcel Janco invited him to join the founders of Ein Hod, a utopian artists' village at the foot of Mount Carmel. In 1954-55 and 1961 he traveled extensively in South America and the United States and during 1958-59 in Europe. In 1962, Yohana Simon he moved Herzliya and had a studio in the Artists' Village Ein Hod.
Yohanan Simon's early work can be described as Social Realist as he used to paint scenery from the Kibbutz. In his mature work, after he traveled in South America, he freed himself from the social realism and became more abstract and colorful. His work was influenced by the Fauvism of Fernand Leger, André Derain and Diego Rivera.
Throughout his career he exhibited widely: in London, New York, Tel Aviv, Cologne, San Francisco, Warsaw, Los Angeles, and Scottsdale.
Yohanan Simon died of a heart attack in Israel in 1976.
EDUCATION
1926
Art School in Frankfurt, Germany
Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, Germany
1931-34
École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
AWARDS AND PRIZES
1938
Dizengoff Prize
1946
Dizengoff Prize
1951
Congress of Jewish Culture Prize, New York City
1952
Zichron Yaakov Prize
1953
Dizengoff Prize
1956
Israel Olympic Committee Prize
1958
Ramat Gan Sculpture Prize
1960
The Histadrut Prize
1961
Dizengoff Prize
OUTDOOR AND PUBLIC ART
1951
Congress of Jewish Culture, New York City
1956
Israel Olympic Committee
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
1948
Venice Biennale
1958
Venice Biennale
1953
São Paulo