By Inna Rogatchi, Times of Israel—
Michael Rogatchi Art & Aesthetic of a Modern-Day Spirituality
Michael Rogatchi’s now widely known Forefathers works have originated as his Uzhpitzim series, personalised images of Jewish patriarchs and the formatting leaders of the nation.
Each of those modern classic images has its own history, and they were not created by the artist in a chronological order.
The first appeared Moses, in a rare phenomenon of a subconscious art, or actually communication which Michael was blessed to receive and which he was extremely lucky to read. Back in the end of the 1990s, Michael saw his Moshe Rabbeinu in his dream, exactly as he had depicted him in his great painting: live, questing, having his thoughts and doubts, living through many torments, but determined, strong, unique Jewish man from whom we all are receiving a bit of our enduring National strength, the yeast of our ongoing national, and often personal, survival.
“In that dream , back in 1999, I saw Moshe Rabbeinu in such detail that it is engraved in my memory for good. I also saw the Hebrew letters as if made of fire, which were jumping off and up, from the Tablets”, Michael remembers.
As an artist, he had nothing more to do than to paint everything he saw, and he did it both devotedly and masterly. His Moses, the first personage from his Ushpitzim series and his Forefathers project , started his existence as the object of art preceding the artist’s concept of the Ushpitzim.
This Moses is eternal, to me. He is first and foremost tormented, questing man, he is alive. And here, in this intellectual honesty of an artist, lies the essence of Michael’s creative power and his vision with regard to spiritual art. He does not beautify his and our nation’s heroes. He loves them and sees them also in their torment. Continue Reading…
