Binyamin Shalev --Art on the Square

Agronomy to Art

Binyamin Shalev's passion for art began at an early age in his home in Morocco. He began painting in early childhood, and at age fourteen held his first exhibition in his hometown of Fez. Yet, when the time came for him to choose a profession, he chose agronomy, and after university he worked in Morocco for five years in this profession before arriving in Israel as an immigrant in 1970.

Shalev arrived in Tzfat in 1970. His name preceded him - he was already recognized as a young agronomist who had a brilliant scientific future. He had, while still in Morocco, developed a new system, subsequently adopted world-wide, for forecasting the upcoming harvest's wheat yield. It would have been natural for him to settle in the center of the country, where his opportunities for professional growth seemed boundless. Yet Shalev's love of art directed him to search for an artist's community, and once he saw Tzfat, he never considered any other location in which to live.

Throughout his career at the Ministry of Agriculture, Shalev continued to paint. During this period, he sketched black and white depictions of Tzfat's Old City with its old stone houses, cobbled lanes and windy alleys. When Shalev retired, he began to work in color and today, his acrylic paintings, which intricately depict Tzfat's Jewish Quarter, are some of the most intricate produced in Tzfat today.

Authentic Old City Art

One notices that Shalev's paintings are devoid of people. People don't interest him as subjects for his art. He concentrates on painting each house, each synagogue, each building so as to replicate it perfectly as he shows the beauty and simplicity of the city. Shalev, who has been sketching and painting this area for almost 40 years, is uncomfortable with recent renovations and restorations in the Old City which do not take the character of the city into account. In many ways, he seems to feel that his artistic replications of what he sees will allow future generations to experience the beauty and grandeur of the Jewish Quarter of Tzfat authentically.

Shalev is very much a conservative classical artist. One innovation that he has made, however, is a new medium that he believes that he is the first to experiment with - painting an image on clear plastic, utilizing both sides of the plastic to create a unique representation of new aspects of Tzfat's landscape. He continues to experiment with these miniatures, though his main focus remains his acrylic representations of Tzfat's Old Jewish Quarter. Shalev also exhibits some of his son's stunning nature photography which is very different from his father's style, but shows that, in no small way, the artistic apple of the Shalev family stays close to the tree.

Binyamiin Shalev's gallery is located in the Kikar HaMeginim Square in the center of the Old City of Tzfat. He can be contacted at (04)6820667 or (050)4222544.