Garbian, born in 1976, is one of the leading Israeli painters and draftsmen. His work has been exhibited in the top galleries and museums in the country, and it constitutes an essential reference point in any discussion about contemporary Israeli painting.
Within the Israeli art field, there have been fierce debates since its inception about the local art's relationship to the culture of the Old Masters, the very knowledge and skill in painting, and the charismatic and thematic richness in visual art. The local field seeks to differentiate itself from art history by being non-figurative (perhaps related to the Jewish injunction "You shall not make for yourself a graven image"), with certain forces in the local scene leading to a distrust of technical skill in painting and drawing. It is difficult to pinpoint the origin of this distrust; perhaps it is due to Israeli art being somewhat late to modernity, abstraction, and the expressions of the first half of the twentieth century, and the fear that technical skill is reactionary. As has been written more than once, the local field erroneously identified charisma and philosophical depth as characteristics of Christian painting and differentiated itself by insisting on flatness and a non-charismatic model. This discourse has become quite outdated in recent years, largely thanks to Garbian's work. His paintings are a model of dialogue here/there. They are a model of an attitude that does not harbor an inferiority complex towards the culture of the Old Masters. They are a model of spiritual and intellectual depth that structures his paintings as a psychoanalytic and meta-artistic discourse (referring to my own article*).
Garbian's positioning as a contemporary Israeli master constantly reminds every active artist that it is possible to be Israeli and connected to the Old Masters. Israeli and virtuously skilled in painting and drawing. Israeli and profound. And all this without falling into any traps of conservatism or reaction. Garbian's paintings are a philosophical and psychoanalytic discourse on a wide range of questions about the body, representation, the essence of the act of drawing, time, and meditation. They summon the Old Masters, and they do so in a painterly Hebrew, in an Israeli manner of painting.
