David Gerstein (artist) - Figurative Painting

Figurative Painting

In the 1970s, Gerstein explored the integration of personal statement with figurative painting, particularly in his watercolors and gouache on paper. At first, these works were intended as sketches for large canvas oil paintings. With time, though, he found interest in working in watercolors on paper, only, and they became his main medium. Gerstein created a series of paintings concerning his childhood based on photographs and memories. Another series dealt with the memory of freedom: his mother riding a bicycle in the streets of Ramat Gan, a motif that developed into a series of bicycle riders in the '90s and afterward. A repetitive motif in work describing home interiors was that of the cat and the vase, which, for the artist, expressed, "the placidity of daily routine". Both the cat and the flower vase continued to accompany his work decades later. While involved with these motifs Gerstein wanted "to escape the Israeli political reality to an Olympian turbulent-free, tranquility". In the mid-'70s, he made a series of paintings of people at the beach, influenced both by the artist's childhood memories and observation. Another series of paintings included the landscape of the Ein Kerem neighborhood, where the artist lived at the time, used as a backdrop for compositions abundant with interacting figures in groups and couples.