Patrick O'Boyle

The Carnival, Abstract Painting

2022

this is a bright vibrant abstract wall hanging tapestry by Calman Shemi. I believe the material is wool with a linen backing but i am not positive. it can also be used as a floor rug. Calman Shemi, sculptor and painter, was born in Argentina in 1939. A graduate of the School of Sculpture and Ceramics in Mendoza, he studied under the Italian-Argentinean sculptor Libero Badii whom he credits with putting him on the right path. “He taught me principals, not only related to sculpture, but human and philosophic principals. Shemi also carefully studied the work of such masters as Picasso, Caravaggio, Frank Stella and Matisse. “From each one of these great artists I learned something from observing them,” he says. In 1961, at the age of 20, Shemi immigrated to Israel and joined Kibbutz Carmia of which he was a member for twenty years. There he worked in agriculture and also as a sculptor working with wood and clay. Several of his large-scale fiberglass and polyester projects are situated in public buildings. He was a student of German-Israeli sculptor Rudi Lehmann, a pioneer of the artistic movement known as “Canaanism.” Canaanite art was an effort to create a direct relationship with the land, bypassing historic Jewish connotations—hence the land’s primordial name is used. Canaanite works, with an emphasis on the inter-action of simple shapes, bear a deliberate resemblance to the sculpture and ritual art of early civilizations of the Middle East prior to Judaism, always with an eye to the fusion of man and the land itself. Though sculpture dominated his early years as an artist, in the mid ’70s Shemi developed the idea of the “soft painting” medium. Beginning with a color drawing done to scale, Shemi layers onto the drawing irregularly shaped pieces of variously textured and colored fabrics. Using a threadless 9,000-needle sewing machine, the fabrics are meshed to one another and to the background, resulting in vibrant carpet...

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