Michael Sgan-Cohen

Michael Sgan-Cohen (2 March 1944 – 20 February 1999) was an Israeli artist, art historian, curator and critic.

His oeuvre touches different realms of the Israeli experience and the Hebrew language, displaying a strong connection to the Jewish Scriptures.

His works were nurtured by his extensive knowledge of Art history, philosophy, Biblical Texts, Jewish thought and Mysticism, which in turn illuminated all these pursuits.

His engagement with Judaism and the Bible as a secular scholar and his vast knowledge of modern and contemporary art contributed to the development of a distinctive approach which combined Jewish and Israeli symbols and images to create a multilayered and contemporary artistic language.

Sgan-Cohen's art was anticipatory in many respects: his concept of Israeli identity as part of Jewish Identity developed long before other artists began to see things in these terms.

This reflected in his profound involvement with the formative Jewish sacred texts, both intellectually and by embedding Jewish thought into the essence of his artistic practice.

He was one of the pioneers in the sophisticated use of the Hebrew language as a means of expression in contemporary art.

Michael Sgan-Cohen was born in Jerusalem in 1944.

His father, Dr. Meir Sgan-Cohen, was a well-known figure in Jerusalem and president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi's personal physician.

Sgan-Cohen graduated in Art History and Philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1969.

In the late sixties, while still a student, Sgan-Cohen began writing short articles on art for the literary and cultural supplement of the daily newspaper Haaretz (edited by Benjamin Tammuz).

Between 1969 and 1978 Sgan-Cohen lived in Los Angeles and New York state.

In 1973 he earned his MA degree in art history from the University of California (UCLA) in Los Angeles.

Sgan-Cohen moved to New York in late 1973 to study with the art historian and critic Leo Steinberg.

During this period, he was associated with the "New York Group" of Israeli artists including Pinchas Cohen-Gan, Benny Efrat, Michael Gitlin and Buky Swchartz.

In 1976 he began to work as an artist.

Between 1977 and 1978 Sgan-Cohen returned to Israel and taught at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem as well as at the University of Haifa.

In 1978 Sgan-Cohen had his first solo exhibition at the Kibbutz Gallery in Tel Aviv.

During his years in New York, Sgan-Cohen taught art history at the Brooklyn College and at the School of Visual Arts.

He wrote for a number of art journals, such as Art in America, Art Forum and Art press, as well as for Hebrew journals like Mussag, Proza, Kav, Studio and Monitin.

In 1987 he permanently settled in Jerusalem and since 1990 served as a lecturer in several Art Institutes in Israel including Oranim Academic College in Kiryat Tivon (1990–98), Kalisher Art Academy in Tel Aviv (1990–98), The School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem (1991–94) and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem (1992–98).

He wrote the catalogue articles for Motti Mizrahi (1988) and Ya'akov Dorchin (1990) for The Venice Biennale curated by Adam Baruch.

In 1989 Sgan-Cohen earned his PhD from the City University of New York (CUNY).

His dissertation dealt with the artist and architect Frederick Kiessler, who designed the Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum.

In 1993 Sgan-Cohen had a solo exhibition at the library of foyer of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

In 1994 he had an extensive solo exhibition at the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art.

The following years he had two joint exhibitions—in 1995 with Haim Maor at the Museum of Jewish Art in Bar'am and in 1996 with Tsibi Geva at Julie M. Gallery in Tel Aviv.

Michael Sgan-Cohen curated two major retrospective exhibitions of the painter Lea Nickel (1995) and the sculptor Yehiel Shemi (1997) at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

In 1997 Sgan-Cohen was the recipient of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Prize for Excellence in Plastic Arts and in 1998 he won the Minister of Education and Culture Prize.

He died of an illness in 1999.

During his life and posthumously, Sgan-Cohen's works participated in many prominent exhibitions in Israel, Europe and the U.S. Between 2004 and 2005 an extensive retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

In August 2014 a street was named after Michael Sgan-Cohen and his father in The German Colony neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Life in America sharpened Sgan-Cohen's preoccupation with Hebrew language, Jewish thought (particularly the Bible) and Mysticism and gradually led him from the theoretical articulation of ideas to visual expression.

Michael Sgan-Cohen was primarily concerned with ideas.

His approach to the visual arts may, accordingly, be considered "conceptual", but not in the standard art-historical kind of sense.

The art object was for him a medium of reflection on the fundamental problems of Jewish identity, particularly of the emerging Israeli culture.

Sgan-Cohen's long stay in New York City served to sharpen his awareness of the uniqueness of the Israeli perspective in the role of Jewish culture in the life of modern Jews.

His recurrent treatment of the theme of Nevo, the observation of the Land of Israel from the outside in the position of Moses before he died, attests for this deep concern, and to his attempt to form an Israeli style in the art without becoming provincial or parochial and without falling into the trap of nostalgia.

A major role in Michael Sgan-Cohen's conception of art is given to the word and especially the Hebrew word.

This does not only reflect the artist's preoccupation with ideas and intellectual reflection, but also his recognition of the text as the fundamental medium and subject characterizing Jewish culture.