Yaacov Agam

Yaacov Agam is one of the main exponents of op art. Born on May 11, 1928 as Yaacov Gipstein, he first studied under Bauhaus practitioner Mordecai Ardon in Jerusalem and later under Bauhaus teacher Johannes Itten in Zurich. Greatly inspired by Bauhaus theories and especially inspired by Max Bill, in the early 1950s he began a career that continues to the present day. His work is defined in particular by image objects and sculptures. The artist combines color and shape grids with plexiglass prisms to create works that often look different depending on the angle they are viewed from and that appear to move.

Yaacov Agam is defined by his »prismagraph« artworks. His »Night Lights« is a perfect example of this technique: The artist places eight triangular plexiglass prisms over a colored screen print in a way that covers its colored parts. The plexiglass prisms do not conceal the colors, however, but rather cast the colors onto the prisms’ two exterior surfaces, creating a twinkling effect when the observer walks past the work or when the eye wanders over it.

»What I need is what brought me my success: contact, the comforting feeling that a dialog has come about between me and my audience, and that my works destroy shape to convey a meaning.«

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