Samy Briss is one of Israel’s most popular artists who combines a cubist style with a Byzantine one. His figures are modem icons – frontal and classic but also humorous and whimsical. Briss’ images capture the strength and vulnerability of modem life.
Samy Briss was born in 1930, in Jassy, Rumania where Ionesco was born 18 years earlier. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bucharest under Ressu, a disciple of Gustave Moreau. In 1960 he settled in Israel and in 1967 he had his first one-man-show in Tel Aviv. His murals of mosaics and reliefs on wood decorate several public buildings. His works are in
Museums and private collections in Rumania,France, Israel, England,Germany, Sweden, Holland, Luxembourg, Canada and the U.S. A. The artist lives and worksin Paris.”Samy Briss is a painter of the magical and the marvelous, whose nostalgia for icons comes straight from his native Moldavian plains. His surrealistic artistic experience makes him brother to Paul Klee and Victor Brauner. But his images are symbolic, their naivete has a genuine popular essence expressed in a subtly metamorphosed conventionalized style. Briss’s choice and use of colors are remarkable. As inventive as it is nuanced and captiving, it evokes the tones of the enamels, bisque-fired pottery, and the sober luminosity of the primitives. Briss’s painting is one of myth and memory rooted in the web of time – in other words, in universal “childhood”.
One-man-shows: 1973 Galerie Romanet, Paris 1974 Galerie Art Actuel, Nancy 1975 Galerie Romanet, Paris 1976 Galerie Art Actuel, Nancy Galerie Bellido, Pau Galerie Peerlings, Kreefeld Galerie Moyon Avenard, Nantes 1977 Idea Centre – M. Damsteg, Den Haag Galerie F. Kohn Galerie le Hiboux, Luxembourg Galerie Elca London, Montreal 1978 Galerie Romanet, Paris Safrai Gallery, Tel Aviv 1980 Galerie le Hiboux, Luxembourg Galerie Hoffman, Koln 1988 Galerie Evasion, Liege Galerie Amylis, Bruxelles Safrai Gallery, Tel Aviv Safrai Gallery, Jerusalem University of Judaism, Los Angeles Poulsed Gallery, Pasadena Galerie du Forum, Reims 1989 Galerie Romanet, Paris Galerie Forum, Reims Galerie Meissner, Hamburg 1990 Galerie Leon Keunincks, Belgium Galerie zur Krone, Batterkinden Galerie Klostermuhle, Hude, Deutschland 1991 Galerie Kishi, Osaka, Japan Noortman, Maastrich, Holland 1992 Galerie zur Krone, Batterkinden Galerie Romanet, Paris 1994 Galerie Den Bieman de Haas, Amsterdam
Samy Briss
Exhibitions:
1981 Safrai Gallery, Tel Aviv
1983 Debel Gallery, Jerusalem
1984 Galerie Francaise, Munich Levin Gallery, New York Garelie Khoury, Bremen Galerie Romanet, Paris
1985 Galerie Zur Krone, Switzerland Galerie Unterburg, Switzerland Judge Gallery, Washington D.C. Judge Gallery, Durnham Galerie Maria Piras, Vichy
1986 Galerie du Forum, Reims Hadassa K. Gallery, Tel Aviv Galerie St. Gilles, Liege
1987 Galerie Zur Krone, Switzerland
1994 Galerie D’Etraz, Lausanne
1995 Galerie Den Bieman de Haas, Amsterdam
1996 Galerie D’Etraz, Lausanne Galerie de la Petrusse, Luxembourg Galerie Aktuaryus, Strasbourg
2000 Galerie Schaer Und Wildbolz, Switzerland
Group exhibitions:
1979 Artexpo, Bassel
1988 Artexpo New York Artexpo Los Angeles
1989 Artexpo New York
1990 Artexpo New York
