Nostalgia Sunday – From Zeev to Zeev

April 5, 2009 - 10:55 PM by Rachel Neiman · 1 Comment
Filed under: General, Holidays, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture

Illustrator and comics artist Zeev Engelmayer creates works that are rooted in nostalgia for an Israel gone by. In his new Passover exhibition, “Matza & Tequila” — which opened last week at Tel Aviv’s Urbanix Gallery — Engelmayer displays illustrations, collages, and original hand written texts from the “Engelmayer Haggadah”, ceramics, animations and pieces inspired by the Haggadah, which was published 10 years ago and has now been reissued by the Israel Cartoon Museum.

Engelmayer likes to mix visual references of Israeli culture with combined with cinema images from the 50’s, commercial advertisements, catalog photos and schoolbook illustrations. His text are usually a dopey play on words that nonetheless strike a deeper chord. For example, this picture whose title, loosely translated, is something like, “Behold, the Prom-assed Land.”

And this one, entitled “Hametz On the Arava Highway,” which could be a reference to the “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” genre of horror film, or could equally be a comment on the panic demonstrated by vigilant family members trying to rid their homes (or perhaps the world…) of unleavened bread before Passover.

Another exhibition that opened this past week: a retrospective of works by the late Yaakov “Zeev” Farkash, whose cartoons and caricatures were a staple feature in Ha’aretz for 40 years. I remember Zeev from the glory days of Cafe Tamar, a small, modest smiling man who, every year at Passover, created a new and different “Gone On Vacation” sign for proprietor Sarah Stern in his signature pen and ink style. The works — and Sarah– are still there today.

“Matza & Tequila” runs through April 16th at Urbanix, which specializes in urban art and vinyl toys. The Zeev retrospective will be up through June 20th at the Israel Cartoon Museum.

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