Lot 276: Leah Goldberg (1911-1970) – Collection of Sketches

Leah Goldberg (1911-1970), approx. 40 sketches.
Varied techniques. A few are signed and dated. 12 of the sketches are drawn on the leaves of a sketchbook. Some of the leaves bear sketches on both their sides.
Size varies. Some stains.
Leah Goldberg (1911-1970), a leading Hebrew-language poet, author, translator, scholar and literary critic, was also a visual artist. She illustrated several of her own books, including "HaMefuzar Mikfar Azar" ("The Absentminded Fellow"), an adaptation of a Russian story by Samuil Marshak. In the last years of her life, she devoted much of her time to visual art, at first focusing mainly on sketching and later on collage. Her collages were shown in two exhibitions during her lifetime – at the Jerusalem Artists House (1968) and at the Kfar Menachem gallery (1969).
In an interview from 1969, Goldberg said: "The urge to create is the same both in poetry and in painting, but I do not create illustrations of my poetic thoughts. My associations when painting are definitely not literary. […] I need painting to escape from literature to another, more substantive world. Writers are drawn to painting since they are searching for a real existence whose perception is direct. Presumably, this is the reason I escaped to painting, because I hardly write". In the same interview, Goldberg also addressed her occupation with collage: "In collage I have the ambition to take material and use it differently […] I also enjoy cutting the paper, and mounting it, and the fact that I am changing its meaning. In collage, it is easier for me to reach the abstract; I love a good abstract but cannot reach absolute abstraction. Even in my less material poems there is something that is related to figurative art".
See:
1. Leah Goldberg (Hebrew) by Hamutal Bar-Yosef. Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2012. pp. 284-287.
2. Light Along the Edge of a Cloud (Hebrew), by Giddon Ticotsky. HaKibbutz HaMeuchad – Sifriyat Poalim, 2011.