Moshe Zaidler

The man

Moshe Zaidler is a deeply introspective painter. He uses painting to descend into the subconscious: into his experiences, his emotions and his personal history.

He began painting in 2001, and has painted ever since in his studio in Israel. His surroundings are his material: his own home and his parents’ home, the objects that fill them, landscapes along the road, a scene from a film that would not let him go.

From the dark side

He was born into a difficult childhood, the son of a Holocaust survivor.

His paintings return to what was carried home from there: trauma, memory, loss, and the resilience that grows in their shadow. Painting is how he confronts the past, and how he turns it into something that can be looked at, and lived with.

His longest series is the self-portrait, which has followed him through every year of his work. No two are alike.

In his words

“My art is, above all, an investigation of painting itself, and of everything it can do.”

I work intuitively and experimentally, on surfaces I find: Formica, plywood, pieces of furniture, fabric, paper. When a subject takes hold of me I explore it again and again, and series are born.

Every painting is a chance to dive into the depths of colour, form and brushstroke, and to create worlds out of nothing.