Articles and Reviews
Eloquence of space
Alan McCulloch. The Herald. 28 August 1975
The paintings and drawings of Rafael Gurvich (Powell Street) affirm the promise of two years ago when this artist won the Elaine Target prize for drawing. A panel of pencil studies of the nude shows him drawing with authority, and the strength derived from this source gives authority also to his best painting (Room portraits #6)
This large picture with its Blau Reiter blue, red and green colours really works both as a painting and as large scale decoration. Uncertain as yet of his true direction, Gurvich is alternatively attracted to Cezanne and German expressionism.
For this reason his painting problems are only half-way resolved in many of these pictures. Gurvich shares Powell Street Gallery with well-known sculptor, Ian McKay.
Three shows vastly different
Jeffrey Makin. The Sun 27 August 1975
Rafael Gurvich at Powell street is decidedly more interesting.
Gurvich studied at the RMIT. He’s 26, won the Elaine Target drawing prize in 1972, the Kenneth Smart this year and appears by the measure of his painting to be a rugged individual.
He has completely by-passed the minor developments of post- war art, like Hard Edge, ColourField and the New York School and has taken the major invention of the 20th century painting – Cubism – as his premise. In particular, he has taken the first stage of Cubism, Analytical Cubism and the work of George Braque and Juan Gris.
But that appears to be very early in Gurvich’s career – the tell-tale treatments are still noticeable but are subjugated beneath a highly personable, intuitive interpretation of the human figure and the still life.
Clearly, his smaller works like “Room Woman” and “Still Life Sunday” are his best. Here he’s in sympathy with his subject matter and its scale.
They depend upon a planular analysis of form for their structure. And Gurvich’s colour recalls combinations used by Gaugin and the symbolists – its rationale is not reality but psychology.
Strange Vibrations
Alan McCulloch. The Herald 21 April 1977
More conventionally surrealistic in style and idealogy are the paintings of Rafael Gurvich at the Avant Galleries.
Like Sansom, Gurvich……….. …………the Visual Arts Board of the Australian Council.
The 52 works in this show are the outcome of subsequent travels in England, Spain and Italy
With what result? What is the significance of this proliferous burgeoning of spiky blue forms in sand coloured , undefined space? Remembering the force implicit in some of his early drawings, I’d say that the present group of pictures is painstakingly contrived.
Rather than response to new experience it reads like the conscientious repayment of a debt.
This may well indicate a flaw in the VAB grants system; namely that by placing artists under an obligation to produce work it damages the spontaneity of the creative impulse.
Painting by Number
Rod Carmichael The Sun 17 May 1978
It was with great relief that I turned to the work of Rafael Gurvich at Stuart Gerstman Galleries.
This young Australian painter is pursuing a course of his own. His work reminds me at times of Beckman and that’s no bad thing.
He paints with a vivid palette, and the forms writhe and entwine sensuously over the picture plane.
But I particularly admired his small drawings and watercolours.
He has had a long look at Saul Stienberg and the influence is a healthy one. These are some of the finest drawings seen in a Melbourne gallery this year, modest and unassertive, they say more in a quiet way than much of the self-conscious conceptual working of louder voices.
Weavers from the desert
Alan McCulloch The Herald 18 May 1978
Rafael Gurvich (Gerstman) is that rare phenomenon among young artists – a painter with a sense of style.
At casual glance his pictures look like Caro’s sculptures, rendered vertically and re-orientated as paintings in a figurative context.
Sharp edges, luminous colours and shapes silhouetted against white give this impression.
But Gurvich expresses enough of his own personality to make his an exhibition that fully justifies the Australian Council grant that took him for furtherance of his studies to Europe and the U.K. in 1975-76.
His major work is probably Train Traveller (#5) in which the dialogue comprising subject, light, colours and segmented forms, is beautifully disciplined.
Within the empty carriage the traveller sits – but not in isolation.
The fragmented figure is part of a sliced, fragmented whole, as fully expressive as the implied rattle of the rusting wheels or the snatches of green landscape that shine briefly through the windows.
A series of working drawings and small etchings, notably those symbolising the seven days of the week, reveal Gurvich’s train of thought as well as his working methods.
Professional pair protest in oils
Jeffrey Makin. The Sun. 31 October 1979
There is a sense of protest about the exhibitions of Raphael Gurvich and John Dent that opened simultaneously last night.
What comes across, apart from the quality of their painting, and the excellence of presentation, is dissatisfaction with what most commercial galleries offer to young artists.
It is also an unwillingness to pick up the crumbs after Nolan, Boyd, Tucker, Brack and Whitely have had their slice of cake.
Justifiably, Dent and Gurvich are peeved with an art scene that moves on the basis of seniority rather than merit.
They are typical of a new, emerging group of young Australian painters who are better trained, more talented, more knowledgeable, and more professional than their predecessors.
And that’s the way it should be.
Dent and Gurvich were trained at RMIT between 1969-73 and travelled extensively throughout Europe immediately after graduating.
Dent is the more lyrical of the two. His subject matter, like Bonnard’s centres on the still life, the figure and the interior.
Gurvich, however, has a more aggressive tonality and rather than working directly from the object, he uses it like Miro, as a basis of influence from which he invents matter-based metaphors.
Both work flatly up the picture plane, and have an intuitive feel for oil paint but that’s about where the comparison ends although they show together, they emerge as incredibly independent artists.
Dent’s line and touch is tentative, soft. And the form he achieves, like the shallow form in Woman with black lips is made up of sketchy etcher’s lines and rubbed scumbles.
Occasionally, like most tonalists, he makes a mistake in the correlation of colour to tone, as seen in the floating blue foot in Displaced Objects.
But generally Dent works to a surface richness that’s given its Rococo edge by actually painting the frame into the picture.
Gurvich’s colour by contrast, is more acid, tart. Yet, like Dent, he’s inherited the limitations of the RMIT style – he skilfully knows the way to achieve form tonally, but when he comes to laying colour on that form it often floats away.
But that’s perhaps a relatively minor point when you consider the way Gurvich achieves a representational meaning through an abstracted symbol – it’s just like pictorial Bela Bartok.
Artist’s dimensions
Ken Bandman The Australian Jewish News 2 November 1979
“I am attempting to capture and re-create the emotional responses I have to all aspects of my daily life. These responses are further coloured by the effect of seasonal changes upon me.
I want to express the exhilaration of my existence – not just the more serious side. Slowly, a pictorial language of my own has evolved.”
Rafael Gurvich, a 30 year old Jewish artist, of Russian decent, is exhibiting the “exhilaration of his existence” in a three storey warehouse in a ramshackle lane, in the city, not because a warehouse is representative of the current state of his life, but merely because some of his paintings are too big to go anywhere else.
The smaller paintings, drawings and etchings are being accommodated at the Stuart Gerstman Galleries.
This joint exhibition is what Gurvich describes as “a very exciting and monumental exhibition – something that hasn’t happened before in Melbourne.”
Although the images are crisply outlined and substantial, they remain ambiguous in form and content – one is never quite sure whether they are animal, vegetable or mineral.
This metamorphosis or symbolism – is it a disguise? – The artist, jealously, hiding himself from us.
RECOGNITION : Others appear to feel the same. However, one critic wrote But Gurvich expresses enough of his own personality to make his an exhibition that fully justifies, the Australian Council grant which took him for furtherance of study to Europe and the U.K. in 1975-76.
“His hallucinatory objects integrate and communicate in a coherent way.”
Gurvich’s major work is the “Train Traveller” which has been admired for beautifully disciplined dialogue between subject, light, colours and segmented forms.
A series of working drawings and small etchings, notably those symbolising the seven days of the week, reveal Gurvich’s train of thought as well as his working methods.
Gurvich has been strongly influenced by Saul Steinberg.
He initially studied as an architect at Melbourne University, but discovered that he must paint and crossed to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology to study art.
Since 1972, he has received many artistic prizes, has had five one man exhibitions and travelled to Italy, Spain and the U.K. on an Australia Council Grant.
His collections are on display in five government galleries.
Gurvich’s latest exhibition is in partnership with John Dent. It was opened at the studio/warehouse, Highlander Lane on October 30
Double bill displays two rich talents
Graeme Sturgeon The Herald November 1979
John Dent and Raphael Gurvich have combined to present a joint exhibition of recent paintings, drawings and prints. The show is divided into two parts, one at Stuart Gerstman Galleries and the other, and larger section at their warehouse studio in Highlander Lane, which runs off Flinders Street near Kingsway. Both men are young, talented and with a growing list of exhibitions to their credit.
Gurvich has created a curious fantasy world at once surreal, joyful and delightful in which strange humanoid flora and animals and people, which are half plant, sway rhythmically across the shallow space in which the action takes place. His odd, visionary world, his ability to invent powerful graphic shapes and his choice of a distinctive blue-green palette set his work apart from that of his contemporaries.
Gurvich has a second string to his bow, that is his not inconsiderable ability as a printmaker. He has recently produced two hand-printed, hand-bound books of etchings which demonstrate both his skill as a draftsman and his skill in his craft.
Dent is an artist of quite enormous talent and, I believe, a candidate for the position of major artist. His lyrical paintings of genre subjects presented in a quasi-abstract style indicate an instinctive feel for paint and placement which, combined with his sensitive use of colour marks him as an artist of unique potential.
At the same time he is irritatingly uneven in his work, presenting the fine and original alongside the derivative and unresolved. But they are minor problems which time and work will solve. His major strength lies in his ability to place his work in the areas of ambiguity which exist at the points where realism and abstraction, two-dimensional and three-dimensional meet.
For example, in his painting, After the Party, the objects scattered across the table surface read, at first glance, as a series of abstract shapes distributed against a coloured ground. A second look resolves them into everyday objects of a dining room table set in a coherent, if somewhat flattened space.
Condor room, and a spring growth
Alan McCulloch The Herald November 1979
John Dent and Rafael Gurvich are holding simultaneous exhibitions, at Gerstman’s and on two floors of an old bluestone building in Highlander Lane (off Flinders Lane near Kings Way).
At Gertsman’s their work runs true to form, being moderate in size, with Dent’s soft, and at the same time scratchy interiors, looking rather like the leftovers from a Bonnard clearance sale and Gurvich’s like a decimated crop of new-season asparagus.
But the main impact of this simultaneous exhibition is at Highlander Lane where in particular Gurvich’s succulent colours, and blue green and pinked-tipped forms attain full stature.
Taking his cue perhaps from the permanent tenant of the building, Roger Kemp, Gurvich gradually comes into perspective as a dedicated, architectonic symbolist.
Astonishingly his spear-shaped, sculptural little shapes burgeon into life like freshly watered plants after a burst of spring sunshine.
Originality of colour, placement and design enhances the invigorating effect.
“I want to express the exhilaration of my existence” writes the 30 years old Gurvich in the catalogue.
And to emphasise this intention he entitles one of his large paintings Glorious Hymn to the Joy of Just Being.
Such words in such times give cause for great optimism – especially when accompanied, as here, by a lot of hard work.
The Highlander Lane exhibition also brings out the best in Dent whose strength is his understanding of texture.
The texture of real objects, of materials, of the matier of paint or the mordant or broken quality of an etched line evoke from him an immediate sensuous response.
This is clearly evident in the still life, Pregnant Vase and Scissors, 1977, the etchings, Woman with Black Lips, 1977 and Looking towards Richmond, 1979, and the large, En Fait la Toilette, 1977-78, the major work
Australian Painters – Dent and Gurvich
Robert Lindsay, Gallery (Monthly Magazine of the National Gallery Society of Victoria) 1979
John Dent and Rafael Gurvich recently, in conjunction with Stuart Gerstman Galleries, had a combined exhibition held simultaneously at Dent’s Highlander Lane Studio in the city and the Gerstman Galleries in Hawthorn. This enterprise was indicative of a new enthusiasm in the art scene and the artists’ growing desire to control the way their art is viewed.
These two artists are stylistically quite different, although they represent a similar reaction to the art scene in general. Rafael Gurvich and John Dent trained at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology during the late 1960’s, and although their art is moving off in completely different directions remnants of their art school training remain in their use of schematised linear patterns and pictorial distortions.
Rafael Gurvich’s art is a personal poetic chronicle of his daily life. He uses schematised images of plants, animals, flowers, birds, and figures, to form elements of a symbolic language. His paintings relate and link to form a diary of remembered incidents.
In a limited palette of blues and creams of his early works the images of schematised heads punctuated by geometric fragments of memory, or truncated images journey through allegorical landscapes.
In his recent work Rafael Gurvich has become more concerned with colour. His drawings and etchings are used for problem solving, for notations, and the refining of ideas. In his paintings the use of rich luxuriant colours attempts to capture and express the warmth and exhilaration of the spring and summer seasons.
Just as the 19th century German Romantic painters attempted to develop an iconography based on nature, so Rafael Gurvich is building up a symbolic language of his own to express his enthusiasm and joy of life.
John Dent’s work is mainly concerned with painterly patterned still-lives and interior scenes, in which texture and linear patterning is highlighted by a use of close tonal colour arrangements. he uses a schematised linear pattern with a number of shifts in perspective viewpoint so that in effect different areas, patterns and objects are dislocated and then isolated from each other.
Often in Dent’s table still-lives the edge of the table is out of line with the room or the objects on the table, so that the objects are then read as decorative patterns and flat areas of painterly brushwork.
His work has a delicacy and feeling reminiscent of Vuillard and Bonnard, yet has a quality which is essentially individual and contemporary.
With the fading of the mainstream charts and apparent demagnetising of the New York compass it seems as if the flotilla of art has been cast adrift on a changing sea with no guiding reference points outside each individual artist’s private world of experience until a new paradigm example, combining and epitomizing many of the ambient features apparent in art now, will emerge as a lighthouse to illuminate a new gospel with its own style and subject matter.
To predict what is about to happen is dubious at the best of times, however there is a number of characteristics now apparent in art which may combine to form a new dominant style.
There has been a rejection of abstraction and of conceptual systems and a return to visual content.
The esoteric aesthetics and philosophies of recent art have been replaced by a journey back into personal and emotional art ranging from lyrical romanticism to personal expressionism, based on the artist’s private experiences.
Formalist art has been replaced by paintings which contain schematised images of a private world or experiences depicted with an expressive painterly brushwork which has the intensity of emotional spontaneity. In many contemporary paintings connotations of totems, mysticism and magic abound, along with images drawn from private worlds and domestic areas of activity – in a sense an arm’s length perception of the world. Often there is a surrealistic quality in these works for their rhyme and reason is purely personal rather than a conventional universal.
From metamorphosis to moments of magic: The works of Rafael Gurvich
Robert Lindsay, Gallery (Monthly Magazine of the National Gallery Society of Victoria) 1979
In 1978 the National Gallery of Victoria, through the Michell Endowment, acquired the work of a young artist, Rafael Gurvich (born 1949, attended RMIT and Melbourne University). He said about his work Train Traveller:
I am attempting to recreate certain experiences and emotions that are, or have happened to me during some stage of my existence. The changing role of known objects forms part of this existence. Our responses to familiar objects can fluctuate according to our personal feelings at the time of viewing these objects. So that while we are looking at, say a flower which traditionally inspires peacefulness, the momentary drama of our personal lives might transform that flower into a horrifying experience. This metamorphosis is something that has increasingly occupied me…. a clock becomes a flower,…. a tree becomes a woman. There is a moment when this metamorphosis occurs, and it is this moment that preoccupies me. A moment where objects melt into one another, disintegrating and splintering apart and then together to form a new homogenous body …. a new experience.”
In the intervening decade, Gurvich’s work has become more lyrical, his jewel-like colours rich and sparkling, complementing his high personal poetic imagery. It is a journey from the cubist-like metamorphosis to moments of fantasy and magic.
Rafael Gurvich has recently published his book Nothing But Blue Skies which brings together a comprehensive and broad selection of his paintings. It concentrates on 38 recent paintings reproduced in full colour and nine earlier paintings in black and white.
There are also drawings and sketches. The book has been 12 months in the making and follows earlier publications by the artist, Shapes published 1980 and The Moons Carnival published 1983.
The book is an attempt by the artist to document recent paintings and images. It also includes an introductory essay by the artist and critic Arthur McIntyre Gurvich creates his own visual music and an essay by the artist Reflections on a Journey.
Nothing But Blue Skies is available from the Gallery shop. $39.95
Lyrical whimsy in Melbourne artist’s work
Sue Saxon. The Australian Jewish Times. March 17 1989
Reaching the age of 40 is generally regarded as a watershed in one’s life. For one artist, turning 40 truly represents the end of his apprenticeship and, having refined both craft and visual repertoire, looks toward distilling the essence of his experience in his best mature work.
Raphael Gurvich, after 20 years of painting, exudes quiet optimism. ”Seeing the pictures hanging in this exhibition makes me feel proud and happy with the world I have created.” he says.
The 25 semi-abstract paintings at the Holdsworth Gallery in Woollahra contain a lyrical whimsy and a lively joie de vivre. His “world” is populated by birds, cats and fish, frolicking and cavorting in canvases of glowing colour.
A veteran of 13 solo shows, several painting and drawing prizes including the Blake Prize for Religious Art and more than 18 group exhibitions, Melbourne born Gurvich is enjoying a sense of peace that eluded him as a young artist, despite early critical acclaim.
“When you’re a young artist, you don’t have much to be happy about – no money for materials or good food, miserable living conditions and a terrible love life. How can you paint happy pictures? It was only five or six years ago that I felt my art was beginning to mature and become happier. I had gained control of the skills and vocabulary.” Gurvich says.
Gurvich’s experience as a young artist began in 1969, when he left home to study painting at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Two previous years studying architecture helped lay a technical base and establish a strong working disciple. Rejecting early success, he withdrew from the commercial art scene for some years, exhibiting jointly with his wife Jenny, also a painter, in their studio.
“To me painting is about the development of the mind, which your painting then reflects. I felt that people wanted me to keep doing a certain type of work, and I needed more time to develop.” he says.
Gurvich and his wife Jenny Plunkett, have lived and worked together for 14 years, in a mutually supportive relationship. They now run a framing business in Melbourne which gives them financial autonomy and the freedom to pack their bags and head off for foreign climes. They have travelled extensively, trips to Indonesia and Japan proving particularly influential for Gurvich’s art .
“I’ve always been interested in Eastern culture. My father began collecting Japanese wallpaper and other objects, long before the East became popular. My sense of space is more Asian, I’m not interested in perspective and modelling, more in the flat surface, which is very Eastern,” he says.
“This flatness is also evident in some of my cartoon-like figures which grew out of a desire to record my thoughts quickly.”
The current body of work in the Holdsworth exhibition is based on the time spent on a friend’s farm and at Coffs Harbour. Although the human form appears occasionally, Gurvich employs animals to play out his themes of romantic and maternal love.
“I now have the confidence to paint about the sensitive side of my nature. I use animals and birds to express human emotions that would look very corny otherwise,” he says.
Citing the Russian artist Kandinsky as a kindred spirit, Gurvich says his paintings are also concerned with the emotional properties of colour and form, as well as a desire to create visual music. It is the softness and sense of humour of Judaism and the lyrical quality of the Yiddish language in particular that Gurvich says he is attempting to capture. Gurvich’s first language was Yiddish. His parents came to Melbourne before the war broke out, with the aim of placing as much distance as possible between themselves and Riga. Both were involved in Yiddish culture, with Gurvich’s mother teaching at a Yiddish school and his father painting backdrops for the Kadimah Theatre.
Also a keen printmaker, Gurvich has produced a series of limited edition books for the past 15 years. Originally, these books developed as a means of keeping his etchings together in a coherent group.
Gurvich’s latest, Nothing but Blue Skies , is his first commercial release and combines his intentions of making his art available to those who can’t afford his paintings and charting his artistic jurney into happiness.
Travel and Mahler keep Gurvich sane
Arthur McIntyre The Age. 23 September 1985
Rafael Gurvich’s grey hair betrays his youthful appearance and enthusiastic, boyish manner.
His exhibition at Powell Street Graphics of etchings completed over the past three to four years marks a return to the commercial gallery arena for an artist who has become increasingly disillusioned with dealers and the art scene generally.
Gurvich’s grey hairs have been earned over a long period devoted to professional exhibiting and one which has delivered a great many kicks to his head.
He knows he is not unique in this respect. Many local artists learn to live with a sore head (often accompanied by a pain in the back and an ache in the gut), or drop out in order to find a lifestyle which brings greater public respect and private security.
Gurvich lectured at RMIT until seven years ago, when he decided to start up a framing business.
“I enjoyed the communication part of teaching, but fitting in was not easy. I felt there was a real danger of becoming an alcoholic,” he says, half jokingly.
“Members of my family have always used their hands and been fine craftmen. I just have something to express in my paintings and print-making which is different to the rest of my family,” Gurvich explains when recalling his Russian-Jewish background.
“When I was teaching it was considered a demeaning occupation. Things have changed and now some people make jibes because I run a small business. We do three days per week with the framing. One of the best aspects of it is that we have broken out of art cliques and retain our independence and seperateness. Most artists work within the established system, always undermining each other out of competition for the few spoils available. It destroys the soul.”
Explaining his reluctance to exhibit in commercial galleries in recent years, Gurvich observes: “There isn’t much demand for any original statement in Australian art. We have been mounting our own studio shows since 1981. Jenny and I work and sometimes show together. Jenny’s work is more narrative than mine. It is refreshing to be able to hang an exhibition in the way one wants without making compromises to gallery etiquette. I put etchings and small paintings next to my larger canvases. Things are more natural and relaxed.”
The Gurvich’s have happily sacrificed parenthood in order to preserve their energies for their work and to be able to travel frequently.
“In 1975-76 we did the Grand Tour of Europe and a $7,500 VAB grant helped us to stay away for a reasonable time and see plenty. Since then we have been to Java and Japan. Each new place and culture influences my output in many little ways.”
Some of the etchings in the Powell Street show were triggered off by the “living culture” of Java and also by Gurvich’s passion for classical music. There are some intriguing East meets West juxtapositions. Even in the “busiest” of his prints he manages to make order out of potential visual chaos. In many instances, his technical virtuosity only serves to reinforce his expressive intensity.
“I feel that self-expression is too often synonymous with self-indulgence these days,” he says. “We are not interested in the vogue for Paul Taylor or playing art politics. Too much hype has only served to undermine gallery credibility. People who really love art have been put off the gallery scene. It makes me very depressed. Travelling keeps my wife and me sane – keeps our proper perspective about life, not just the local art scene. Travel and music make me feel good. I am crazy about Mahler, Bartok and Dvorak – so much more expressive than most painting.”
Etchings which are devoid of the dancing, lyrical symbols of the “Javanese Rhythm” series will also feature in the Powell Street survey. An impressive black and white (Gurvich seldom uses colour in his prints) triptych is based on memories and fantasies associated with Japan. Each section is vertical in format and can be “read” up and down, with devices and visual puns relating to Japanese art traditions.
Another group of works has a disarming child-like quality and was inspired by trips along the Australian coastline. Pelicans figure prominently.
“Etching has become a more complete and expressive medium for me over the past four years. I love the sensuality of the graphic processes. It is as good as painting, not just a means of working through ideas,” Gurvich says enthusiastically.
The qualities which most impress me about this artist are his extraordinary honesty, his exceptional energy both creatively and physically, and his inability to “sell out” in order to achieve instant fame and curatorial popularity.
Gurvich is a very good artist and a genuinely nice guy. These virtues should not be handicaps to art-world success.
Gurvich extracts joy from pain
Arthur McIntyre The Age 8 May 1989
Melbourne artists are generally labelled angst-ridden and morbid. Rafael Gurvich is an exception. His paintings over the past decade have been hymns to the joys of living and they exude an almost manic intensity, devoid of blackness and gloom.
Some people are tempted to dismiss his works as being frivolous because they are so brightly coloured and positive.
According to the artist, first impressions can be deceptive. Because his paintings are jolly in mood it does not necessarily mean they are lightweight, or lacking quite profound “moments of being.” A recent publication by the artist features plenty of glorious full-colour reproductions and a slightly tongue-in-cheek title: “Nothing But Blue Skies”. Gurvich’s humour often eludes the locals.
His parents are European Jews, who observed, with a degree of consternation, their only son drop out of architecture studies after two years and marry fellow artist Jenny Plunkett, his “partner in crime” for the past 14 years.
We share our lives and our studio with each other,” Mr. Gurvich said. “Jenny and I are both strong individuals. We have decided against having children because we like our own peace and quiet too much. A precious relationship like ours is a very fragile thing.” The 40 year old artist has a youthful face topped by a paradoxical shock of silver-grey hair.
“I love living in Australia. It is comparatively easy to survive here,” he said. We talked at length about how few Anglo-Australians really comprehend the effects that displacement and holocaust have had on huge numbers of people who have come to Australia as the result of wars and persecution.
“As an artist, I believe there is an element of pain in everything you do; immediate pain, or pain from the past. But I have no wish to communicate pain. Out of pain comes joy. The complexities in my paintings are just amazing; all that joy coming through the pain. My art is about much more than eating an icecream.”
Rafael Gurvich’s heritage is echoed in his paintings which often sport witty titles. “My parents were involved in the Melbourne Jewish cultural community, working in theatrical productions and designing sets. Although my father was a much sought after house painter-decorator and a really fine craftsman, he was not an artist, as such, and is concerned solely with assessing art as craft. Much of my painting is difficult for him to appreciate, but his influences are there. I often have fish floating around on my canvasses. I think they originated in the bathroom mural my father painted when I was a child – fish swimming all around the bathroom walls!”
His early years of architectural studies were not entirely wasted. “I am interested in good architecture from any period, because I am fascinated by the way things work – why a painting works, just the same as why a building works. For a long time I have felt a passionate respect for much Japanese traditional architecture. I admire the practicality of it – the brilliant way they relate the inside to the outside world, and the harmony and tranquillity which results. My paintings are inspired by natural phenomena, which I embellish with my own sense of the fantastic. Practicality is married to sensuality; objectivity to subjectivity.”
Air and water often provide blue “fields” which Gurvich populates with creatures, partly real and partly fictional. It is a sort of “floating world”, akin to that of the Japanese.
He believes in the healing powers of natural meditation, and unlike many of his confreres needs neither sex, drugs nor rock “n” roll to get him working. “Painting” is a form of meditation to me,” he explained. “It frees me from tension, just as swimming does. My work is the result of my personal philosophy of life. I hope my paintings can move people in a similar way to music. I like the paintings to sustain viewer interest and encourage prolonged viewing just as good music keeps people tuned in.”
Mr Gurvich is a gentle, intense and obsessive individual who has devoted his life to his art, which has never been appreciated by the smart art set as much as a great deal of conspicuously inferior, trite and pretentious nonsense carrying the stamp of approval of the local academy of the avant-garde. Ultimately, Rafael Gurvich’s sensitivity and dedication will bring their own rewards.
Responding to personal emotion
Paulyne Pogorelske Australian Jewish News 6 January 1989
For Melbourne artist Rafael Gurvich, finding happiness was the turning point in his artistic expression.
Mr Gurvich eschews fashion and dogma and paints in response to his own emotions. Once his paintings were dark and filled with angst, but he has since jettisoned those unpleasant emotions: “I worked out that I could express my exuberance for living,” he said.
Instead of the dark, bleak creations he now paints bright colours and interesting shapes. He maintains that most people misinterpret happiness. “You don’t need to be tap dancing down Lygon St,” he said.
He uses a vast amount of yellow in his work, although it is a colour he was warned against in art school. In his search for colours to express his feelings he has followed his instincts rather than adhering to norms.
The change in his life came when he met his wife, Jenny Plunkett, while studying at RMIT. Their 14 years of “togetherness” has been a source of inspiring happiness which has transformed his life. Ms Plunkett is a fellow artist, and in 1980 they staged a shared exhibition in their studio in Clifton Hill and in 1983 held a joint show in Sydney which was very successful.
Twenty years ago, such a rosy future did not seem certain. It was the old story, he said, of a young man striving to be secure and responsible and satisy expectations of a “good career.” He studied architecture at Melbourne University for two years, until his mother, seeing he was “miserably unhappy”, asked him what he really wanted to do. When he replied “art school”, she told him to enrol. He was amazed and elated, and although his father was less ecstatic, Mr Gurvich went to RMIT. For four years, he discovered and learned new disciples and “drew non-stop.” He found he had a natural ability for drawing from life.
He did not think much about the realities of being a professional artist although he appreciated that it would be difficult. “If you weigh up everything, you can end up doing nothing,” he said, so with “incredible tenacity and single-mindedness” he just went about his work. In 1974 he had his first one man exhibition at the Melbourne University gallery, which was well received. A year later he exhibited at the Powell St Gallery. He began lecturing at RMIT and after 18 months went overseas for a year on a Visual Arts Board grant. “I had a burning desire to see the paintings of Europe.” On his return, he and Ms Plunkett established a picture framing business together.
Acceptance as a Jewish artist, he said, is something that eludes him because he does not paint “literal interpretations of the Bible”, but being Jewish is very much part of his life. He says that “Jewishness means different things to different people.” For him, it is not the formal and traditional structures of religion, but the warmth and exuberance of the Jewish heritage.
“A lot of people believe in the myth that the artist is somehow special and unique: there is that romantic image, but you don’t have to be eccentric to be an artist.” Mr Gurvich is the antithesis of the romantic image: “I’m organised, ordinary and normal with short hair and no beard” he said, facetiously.
He paints to convey the joy he experiences in life, although he can often abandon his canvas for months at a time when there seems nothing in particular to say. “It is only at certain points in my life that I have something to say and I can be totally uninspired for a long time.” He just waits for the next wave of inspiration and then paints “all his happiness.”
European colours on Australian landscape
Susie Ashkenazi The Australian Jewish News September 1989
Powell Street Gallery once again invites us on a fantastic journey by Rafael Gurvich. Melbourne born Gurvich completed art studies at RMIT in 1972, and soon after travelled and painted in Europe after winning a Visual Arts Board of Australia grant. At age 41 he has enjoyed over 16 years of successful exhibiting and is represented in many public collections. Gurvich is also known for printmaking and framing. The Powell Street Gallery have shown his work four times in the last five years.
Lyrical, primary- coloured semi-abstract work characterises his style, while the subject matter and form create strong thematic unity among the 20 works. The artist uses recurring colours, imagery and symbols borrowed directly from childhood. Gurvich paints a fluid “Technicolour” vision of innocence and fun. He sets a playful and celebratory mood by his use of holiday-type beach scenes filled with anthropomorphic figures, fish, birds, animals and people diving in and out of the sea and air.
His major works achieve a surreal and even hallucinatory feel as I believe they affect more than a mood change in the viewer but a visual and mental experience. Or is Gurvich playing mind games with us?
The Fishermans’ Ball would make it seem so with the absurdity of giant top hatted cats gazing eerily at the activity of boats and birds surrounded by an exploding sky. The Gift Horse depicts a Trojan horse filled with brightly painted top houses, building blocks and the familiar image of fish. One serious note is struck in The Stockbroker , a dog with a human face, a clock on its head, and a briefcase handle on its back.There is no Australian element except perhaps the predominance of the beach, and one view of the work is that the high-key colour is attributable to Gurvich’s European roots. There are certainly recognisable stylistic traits of the early European avant-garde such as Miro, Klee and Dubuffet.
Whether or not the exhibition plunges you into an altered state, you will find yourself momentarily transported by Gurvich’s imaginative contemporary primitivism.