Salonnièr #7: 28 September - 05 October
Hadar Gad
The life and work of Joseph Budko
Hadar Gad
The life and work of Joseph Budko
|
During her residency at Salon Berlin, Hadar Gad will continue her ongoing research into Joseph Budko. Budko was a painter and the director of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design from 1935 to 1940. He was the brother of Hadar Gad's grandmother and lived in Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s.
A few years ago, Hadar began researching the Jewish social and cultural life in Eastern Europe before the Second World War. Through her paintings, she translates archival materials, memories, and historical fragments into a body of work reflecting on migration to Israel/Palestine at that time. A central source of inspiration for this research is Hadar's ongoing engagement with Joseph Budko's work and archive. Budko’s artworks were a constant presence in Hadar's childhood home, adorning the walls of her grandmother's house, as well as those of her parents and aunt. They played a pivotal role in shaping her visual language and artistic memory.Drawing from archival materials and Budko’s imagery, Hadar creates portable, intimate objects known as 'memory journals', which can be folded and carried from place to place. These echo forms of refugee art and displaced memory. Alongside these works, she also creates oil paintings on canvas, including large-scale works. In these paintings she attempts to fuse together fragments of memory from different periods to create images in which thought and image interact. This layered relationship to memory is also reflected in her technique. She builds up her paintings with multiple layers of paint, scraping into the surface with a knife to expose light through the canvas or paper beneath. This process resembles an archaeological excavation, where meaning gradually emerges as hidden layers are revealed. |
|
Hadar Gad (b. 1960) is a painter whose work unfolds through landscapes and sites charged with personal and collective memory. She creates her paintings through layers of paint, erasure and scraping to explore surfaces where realism dissolves into atmosphere. This process allows questions about how memory is preserved in a changing cultural, linguistic and emotional landscape to emerge subtly from within the image.
Hadar’s works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Jewish Museum in NY, and are held in public and private collections across Israel, Europe, and the United States. She is represented by the Rothschild Art Gallery in Tel Aviv.
Hadar studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and later at the Avni Institute of Art and Design. Throughout her career she received scholarships from the Israeli Ministry of Education (1984–1986) and has participated in significant residency programmes in Paris and New York. In 2016, she was awarded the Israeli Ministry of Culture Prize. She is the winner of the Plums Art Foundation's Creative Grant 2024. Over the years, she has taught art in various frameworks, including at the Art Center on the Jewish-Arab Campus in Givat Haviva.
Hadar’s works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Jewish Museum in NY, and are held in public and private collections across Israel, Europe, and the United States. She is represented by the Rothschild Art Gallery in Tel Aviv.
Hadar studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and later at the Avni Institute of Art and Design. Throughout her career she received scholarships from the Israeli Ministry of Education (1984–1986) and has participated in significant residency programmes in Paris and New York. In 2016, she was awarded the Israeli Ministry of Culture Prize. She is the winner of the Plums Art Foundation's Creative Grant 2024. Over the years, she has taught art in various frameworks, including at the Art Center on the Jewish-Arab Campus in Givat Haviva.