Manhattan gallerist draws empowerment from exhibition of Israeli artists
‘Every Israeli who walks in here says it feels like the art is hugging them,’ says owner of FORMah Gallery, featuring ‘The New Barbizon’ show of 3 Russian-born Israeli artists
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
As a Russian-born, Haifa-raised Israeli currently living in New York, Maryana Kaliner wanted to showcase artists from Israel following Hamas’s October 7 attack.
“The New Barbizon” show, featuring the works of three Russian-born Israeli artists, opened on June 13 and is now on display at Kaliner’s FORMah Gallery in the Lower East Side through July 20.
“It feels powerful to have it hung on the walls,” said Kaliner. “And the reactions from people unfamiliar with Israel have been better than I expected.”
The three participating artists are Olga Kundina, Anna Lukashevsky and Natalia Zourabova, who along with Zoya Cherkassky and Asya Lukin, make up the five-member New Barbizon Group. The group’s name alludes to the Barbizon School of 19th century French painters.
Kaliner chose painters with backgrounds similar to her own and whose works show a familiar depiction of their adopted homeland, all with “very Tel Aviv and Jaffa” scenes.
“Every Israeli who walks in here says it feels like the art is hugging them,” said Kaliner. “These are works that show what it is to be a Jew, an Israeli, to be Russian-Ukrainian, to be a Jew in the US.”
The 700 square-foot gallery fronts Manhattan’s Allen Street, with picture windows facing the street and raw cement floors that give the space an industrial feel.
The oil paintings of all three artists, however, bring color and heat to the clean white space. Lukashevsky’s piece, titled “Nika (A first home at the motherland),” shows a woman sitting next to a clothes washer and depicts the wave of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants to Israel since the start of the 2022 war. Kundina’s “Shabbat, 2024” recreates a scene in south Tel Aviv of an ultra-Orthodox man passing a grouping of African refugees.
Many visitors to the gallery think the latter work depicts Brooklyn, unaware of the red and white stripes on the sidewalk curb identifying it as Tel Aviv.
“There’s a sense of heat in the work, but it’s summer and super hot here, so people can really relate,” said Kaliner.
Zourabova specializes in closed domestic spaces. Her deeply toned paintings lately include greens and blues. Lukashevsky is more focused on painting people and their expressions.
Kaliner, who has been living in New York for the last five years and initially worked in the corporate world before turning to art, said she was immediately exposed to the many anti-Israel and antisemitic voices in New York after October 7. She wanted to counter the sentiment with the exhibit.
Kaliner regularly finds herself talking with art viewers, which often turn into political conversations, though not always.
“I was ready for it,” she said. “How could I bring Israeli artists and not be prepared? But I did it on purpose.”
Kaliner said the show is drawing people from Israeli, Jewish and Russian networks, as well as from her former financial world, along with the Lower East Side community and feminist painters. Additional groups, social clubs, the Sotheby’s student institute and others have also taken an interest, coming to learn about artists and the Israeli market.
She tends to be wary, having seen what happened to larger New York galleries that displayed Israeli artists in the last months. For example, the Pace Gallery was vandalized in March, artist Cherkassky was heckled during her February show at the Jewish Museum, and the vandalization of homes of Brooklyn Museum administrators.
She thought about the Venice Biennale and its Israeli exhibit that shut its own doors in protest of the ongoing captivity of the hostages, and the calls to ban Israelis from exhibiting there.
“This is not how it works, and if there is one community that opposes its government, it is the artists, and they should be incredibly supported by the rest of the artistic community,” said Kaliner.
She believes strongly that the conversation about domestic Israeli politics is personal and should remain inside the country, while the image presented to the rest of the world should be of strong, patriotic Israelis.
“I want my country to exist, and I won’t tolerate talk about ‘from the river to the sea,'” she said. “It’s intimidating, but I can’t not do it. I’m not going to not show Israeli artists.”
Instead, she has increased her insurance premium and got better coverage, including security for the opening event.
“It’s open to the public and I can tolerate a lot of political views, but sometimes people with keffiyehs come in and I freak out,” she said. “But even the keffiyeh person had questions and was interested. I think if there’s one mind that I can change to be more tolerant, then I won.”
FORMah Gallery, 42 Allen Street, New York.
