Dani Karavan

Daniel "Dani" Karavan (Hebrew: דני קרוון‎, born 7 December 1930) is an Israeli sculptor best known for site specific memorials and monuments which merge into the environment.

Dani Karavan
דני קרוון
Dani Karavan (1979)
Born
Daniel Karavan

1930 (1930)
Tel Aviv
NationalityIsraeli
Known forsculpture
MovementInternational style
AwardsIsrael prize for sculpture Praemium Imperiale of Japan

Biography
Kikar Levana, Edith Wolfson Park, Givatayim
Monument to the Negev Brigade, Beersheva

Daniel (Dani) Karavan was born in Tel Aviv. His father Abraham was the chief landscape architect of Tel Aviv from the 1940s to the 1960s.[1]

At the age of 13, he began studying painting. In 1943, he studied with Marcel Janco in Tel Aviv and from 1943-49 at the Bezalel School of Art in Jerusalem. After living on a kibbutz from 1948–55, he returned to art. From 1956-57, he studied fresco technique at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Florence and drawing at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.[1]

Art career

Karavan made permanent installations in the form of wall reliefs in Israeli courts and research institutions.[1] Examples of his artwork for courts are the 1966 Jerusalem City of Peace wall relief in the Knesset assembly hall and the environmental sculptures comprising 35 wall reliefs & iron sculpture made between 1962 and 1967 at the Court of Justice in Tel Aviv. For the Weizmann Institute of Science he made the From the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life wall relief in 1964 and the Memorial to the Holocaust in 1972.

"Way of Peace" constructed 1996-2000 between Israel and Egypt

For performance groups he designed stage sets throughout the 1960s and 1970s. These included the Martha Graham Dance Company,[2] the Batsheva Dance Company, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra among others. After representing Israel with his Jerusalem City of Peace sculpture at the 1976 Venice Biennale, he obtained more international commissions - including sculptures in France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Spain, and Switzerland.[1] One such project was a memorial entitled Passages for Walter Benjamin constructed between 1990 and 1994 in Portbou at the Spanish-French border in Catalonia where Walter Benjamin died in September 1940.

Karavan's advocacy of Tel Aviv's modern international style buildings encouraged their restoration and the inscription of The White City as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Along with an exhibition about the city's architecture at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in the mid-1980s, Karavan convinced mayor Shlomo Lahat to form a jury of international architecture and art critics to review these buildings. The value they placed on the city's town planning and design led to conservation in the 1990s and acceptance by UNESCO in 2003.[3]

In February 2016 Karavan got commissioned by Sigmund Rolat, the founder the organization Remembrance and Future Foundation, to design the controversial monument From Those You Saved in Warsaw to commemorate Polish righteous gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Prior to commissioning Karavan, Rolat had denounced the design by Austrian architect Gabu Heindl and artist Eduard Freudmann which had won the preceding controversial monument competition.[4] Karavan initially declined the commission[5] after he had read an article written by Freudmann and Heindl, in which they criticize the foundation and their course of action.[6] In April 2016 Karavan announced that he accepted the commission to build the monument,[7] thereby sparking another furor. To this day the monument for the Polish righteous gentiles has not been built.

Awards

List of projects
A memorial created by Dani Karavan in 2005, depicting the foundation of the Regensburg Synagogue that was destroyed during a pogrom in 1519. The inscription 'מזרח' in Hebrew is 'east' in English.

See also

References
  1. Pixel-Delight Dani Karavan website; accessed 4 January 2007.
  2. Moving force, Haaretz; accessed 18 November 2015.
  3. Yadin Roman. ERETZ: The Book (pg. 259), ERETZ Group. January 2005.
  4. "Philanthropist and Jury Clash Over Design of Controversial Warsaw Memorial". Hyperallergic. 2015-05-08. Retrieved 2018-07-13.
  5. "Warsaw Ghetto Memorial to Righteous Gentiles Hits New Snag". The Forward. Retrieved 2018-07-13.
  6. "The Monument Is a Dilemma". Political Critique. 2016-02-17. Retrieved 2018-07-13.
  7. "Israeli Artist's Agreement To Honor Righteous Gentiles in Warsaw Ghetto Sparks Furor". The Forward. Retrieved 2018-07-13.
  8. Resources: Israeli Art Center. Karavan, Dani Archived 2007-07-08 at the Wayback Machine. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Accessed 9 October 2007.
  9. "Israel Prize Official Site - Recipients in 1977" (in Hebrew). Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  10. Praemium Imperiale. Dani Karavan 1998, sculpture Archived 2007-10-07 at the Wayback Machine, praemiumimperiale.org; accessed 9 October 2007.

Further reading
  • Amnon Barzel, Luigi Lambertini, Pierre Restany: Dani Karavan: Un Ambiente Per La Pace / Environment for Peace (Biennale di Venezia, 1976, Israel) Firenze: Editrice Il Bisonte 1976
  • Ursula Peters: Dani Karavan: Weg der Menschenrechte, in: Ursula Peters: Moderne Zeiten. Die Sammlung zum 20. Jahrhundert, in Zusammenarbeit mit Andrea Legde, Nürnberg 2000 (Kulturgeschichtliche Spaziergänge im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Bd.3), S.274-281.
  • Pierre Restany: Dani Karavan. Prestel, München (1992/1999); ISBN 3-7913-1211-1
  • Udo Weilacher: "Harmonie und Zweifel - Dani Karavan" (Interview), in: Udo Weilacher: Zwischen Landschaftsarchitektur und Land Art. Basel Berlin Boston (1999); ISBN 3-7643-6120-4
  • Udo Weilacher: "Weiße Erinnerung auf grünem Grund. Garten der Erinnerung in Duisburg von Dani Karavan", in: Udo Weilacher: In Gärten. Profile aktueller europäischer Landschaftsarchitektur. Basel Berlin Boston (2005); ISBN 3-7643-7084-X
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