Press & Reviews

The art of watercolor seems to be undergoing a mild revival. It has long been in good standing here, thanks to Zaritzky and his followers, Stematsky and Streichman; but theirs was of a distinctly New Horizons stamp. Oddly enough, the newer arrivals are often firmly fixed on the premises of the Russian and English academies; and only Louise Schatz took the medium into the realm of the completely abstract. The current attractive show by Eve Menes falls somewhere between the Israeli and English schools, but there is a link to early Zaritzky, while her generally fresh color and the views she paints are distinctly those of suburban Jerusalem in the sunlight.
Menes works freehand on huge sheets of excellent paper, allowing each wash or washed-out underpainting to dry before proceeding with the next step. The pencil guidelines are visible but she builds up each delineation in mass rather than line, using the rich, full, loose brush of the classic watercolorist; the pencil lines don't play the role they often assume in the work of New Horizon painters. Her works are soundly and boldly organized: the hillsides that provide the dominant color and texture are seen between the barely drawn but boldly suggested skyscrapers of the Kiryat Yovel area.
Some of the views are seen through a grid of "out-of-focus", negative-space railings and the effects and composition are richly satisfying. In one interesting approach to a difficult traffic intersection-parking-lot piece, she paints only sky and background, leaving the cars and the pattern of poles and lights untouched. But I was most drawn to her views framed by buildings.
Menes avoids raw color and knows when to stop. These very accomplished works were painted over a year ago. One would love to see what she is doing now.

Eve Menes is again showing large, unfussy watercolors of Jerusalem vistas. Trained at Pratt and Columbia in New York, she settled here in 1970. Her teachers were New Realists like Philip Pearlstein, but her own brand of figurative painting is more airy and ephemeral; it depends on little ciphers that come together in a form of impressionism; and she relies on thin washes and the unfinished look, leaving pencil marks and white paper with deliberate effect. Using airy pinks and mauves, Menes evokes the air of Jerusalem as well as its urban slopes and avoids problems by avoiding solidity.
Menes' earlier works were views glimpsed through windows and balcony railings. This time, nearly all the works are seen through a car window, or feature the suggestion of a car looming in the foreground, reminding us that the vehicles we now take so much for granted are a typical part of our cityscape. In one case, a group of cars become the subject itself.
Menes also shows several large canvases, largely in overlaid washes and strokes of acrylic, covering the entire surface in a form of grid, which because of the overlays, tends to become partly opaque. The approach to these "landscapes" is that of painterly abstraction, but these canvases lack the definition and pictorial clarity of the watercolors. If Menes wants a challenge, she should try raising her sights in the latter, taking the conception further into the realm of activated composition.

Eve Menes, Antwerp-born and American-trained and here since 1970, is further evidence that the watercolor in Israel is very much alive, though not actually kicking. For the real problem facing this medium's practitioners is not how to overcome its technical difficulties, but to find something new to say with it.
Menes has for years been experimenting with new ways to look at the Jerusalem landscape, mostly by seeing it through objects like balcony railings or parked cars, which are used as inter-compositional devices; several such cars appear again in her current show. She also relies on safe formula, indicating outlines in pencil and filling them in with flat washes or small dabs of color surrounded by white paper. The results are attractive but seen better singly rather than in repetitious company. This time there is however one large work ( and Menes usually works on large sheets), a mountain landscape that has been painted wet-on-wet without delineation, allowing the spreading pigment to soften the hillside contours and exist for their own sake as patches of tone. Oriental painters have of course been doing this for more than 500 years, but the approach may lead Menes to abandon her safety-net.

Watercolorist Eve Menes this time exhibits oils as well as watercolors and they show rather more promise than her still somewhat hesitant aquarelles. Oddly enough but not surprisingly, the oils are handled thinly, somewhat in the manner of watercolors, with nice gestural passages. But Menes still hasn't found a way to make her pictures more assertive. She might well concentrate on making more reductive compositions from what now constitutes just a corner of her wide-screen landscapes.

Eve Menes has been living in Jerusalem since 1970. Born in Belgium, she grew up in New York. She is exhibiting landscapes in oil and watercolors at the AACI.

Menes paints on location and uses washes of delicate colors in her paintings of Jerusalem landscapes. Light and air are given space as surely as the solid shapes of hillsides, trees and other concrete forms. Her paintings are large and draw the viewer into her studies of calm contemplation of nature.

Menes studied at Pratt Institute and Columbia University with the New Realist painters Gabriel Laderman and Philip Pearlstein. She has been deeply influenced by the writings of Kenneth Clark in his book Landscape into Art, and The Chinese Eye: An Interpretation of Chinese Painting by Chang Yee.

"Often when I trudge up a hill carrying my paint box I ask myself why it is necessary for me to paint directly from nature," says Menes. "I identify with Clark's thoughts - that there is an inherent sanctity of nature which has a purifying and uplifting effect on those who open their hearts to its influence. In Jewish philosophy the Hebrew word makom (place) is sometimes the word for God.

Menes draws a parallel between the Jewish idea that man is God's partner in the process of creation, to the Chinese painters whom Yee describes as painting vast expanses in an effort to have their own controlling hands touching the contents of the universe. Her work is included in the Israel Museum collection, and she has exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States, Canada and Finland, as well as widely in Israel.

Eve Menes is exhibiting new paintings of landscapes in and around the Jerusalem area. She is well-known for the sensitivity with which she renders her subjects in watercolors and oils in a palette of soft, translucent colors.
Her paintings the Jewish concept of partnership between human beings and God in the creative process. When she describes how objects near at hand appear clearly defined while those in the distance like mountains or the sky seem to lose their edges, she relates this to the philosophical. "There is the problem of defining the near and the distant, like the material and the spiritual. We try to combine these in our lives - whether the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem, or the progression of the seasons in the framework of religious ritual and holidays."
Menes has been living and working in Jerusalem since she moved here from the US in 1970. In recent years she has exhibited at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem Theater and in museums and galleries in the United States and Europe.

Eve Menes exhibits oils and watercolors, all of which include the Jerusalem landscape. On second thought, that sentence is inexact. The oils, which are like watercolors, do not contain the Jerusalem landscape, and the watercolors themselves - even less than the oils. And that is precisely what gives them their beauty.
Here is a description of one of the best watercolors. Some details in the center: roofs, domes of mosques, but nothing clear, more like a distant memory. Surrounding this, large washes of light blue, ochre and white. Similar to the light and pleasant air of Jerusalem on a nice day. Almost not the view itself but its smell, like the aroma of Jerusalem. The washes produce long movements that end beyond the page. The touch is so light that it seems nothing touched the page but it was breathed on, and the breath changed its hue from moment to moment.
Eve Menes is a lyric and delicate soul who lives in a world of her own. Her paintings and bearing convey a sensitivity to the tiny murmurings of creation together with a certain distance from human beings. Even her movements and walk are reminiscent of her paintings, her height and hair rising upwards, and her conversation, slow and thoughtful, touches and doesn't touch words and definitions spiced with English, her mother tongue.
"Air, that is what connects all things", she says. "Some think that light and distance are the important things, that perhaps speak of something higher. I think it's important to know how to read, how to understand what comes very easily, very simply: don't overwork it. Use it as an idea, a book. Give it time to ripen."
Perhaps we won't print a picture in the newspaper, I told her, because your paintings are washes of color. Nothing will remain in black and white. True, she answered, and we looked for something that has lines between the washes. A forced solution. These are paintings that you have to see face-to-face, or perhaps smell.

Eleven artists exhibit watercolors at Ella Gallery in Yemin Moshe: Nahada Gafne, Hofstatter, Joseph Hirsh, Hedvah Harkabi, Menachem Lemberger, Eve Menes, Liata Poldatzky, Rivka Peled, Sidon Rotenberg, Ian Reichwarger and Derek Stein. The paintings by Eve Menes stand out from the entire show. Eve Menes was born in Belgium and is a graduate of Pratt Institute and Columbia University in New York.
Eve exhibits a number of watercolor landscapes in pink, purple lavender, eggplant purple and shades of green, building layers of transparency, "veils of color," through which one sees the landscape.
The view is seen through the car window and reflected from the metallic body of the car which adds another dimension to the landscape. This creates harmony between the concentrated color and the transparencies. The brightness of the sunlight and the brilliance strike the viewer with their freshness and a feeling of joyful surprise.
Eve's art is highly original and does not seem influenced by any local artist. She is working herself into the Israeli art world.

The Jerusalem artist Eve Menes was born in Belgium, grew up in New York, studied art in a thorough manner in a university framework. In the United States she participated in many notable group shows.Since her Aliyah in 1970 she has exhibited several times in a modest manner.
The painting is intense, professional, original, semiabstract. Views of Jerusalem and its surroundings are always present. The few oils are predominantly purple, blue or red. The vegetation is convincing in its freshness. Oils, by the way, are mixed with acrylic paint.
The watercolors, comparatively large in number, are original and personal in concept. They are close to abstraction and the artist stops at the moment she thinks right. The arrangement is diagonal. On a white or light background appear buildings, trees, bushes and the atmosphere is springlike, awakening, encouraging, without sweetness (except for single pages). This artist has a special green shade and an ability to produce surprising color harmonies and much rhythm.