Alec Borenstein | Artist
The renowned French-Israeli artist Alec Borenstein (born 1942) has developed a remarkable and prolific body of work over the course of his career.
His oeuvre includes more than 1,000 oil paintings and nearly 3,000 works on paper.
Today, over 300 of his oil paintings and 500 drawings are held in museums and private collections around the world, reflecting the wide recognition of his work.
Alec Borenstein
Moïse sur le mont Sinaï (1950)
Gouache
80cm x 60cm
Alec Borenstein’s artistic journey began at an early age. A child prodigy, he started drawing and painting at just five years old. His passion for art was immediate and intense, and he quickly produced a remarkable body of work.
His exceptional talent soon attracted attention, leading to several of his works being exhibited at the Tel Aviv Museum in 1952.
Alec Borenstein
L'église française à Jaffa (1952)
Gouache
50cm x 70cm
A couple of years later, in 1954, when he was still only twelve years old, the national Israeli newspaper Maariv published an in-depth article entitled Child Prodigies – Alec Borenstein. This helped to launch what would become a long and distinguished career.
Alec Borenstein
Sodome et Gomorrhe (1954)
Gouache
50cm x 70cm
Alec Borenstein
Au cinéma (1958)
Oil on canvas
100cm x 70cm
At age 16, in 1958, Alec won the coveted prize of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation (that same year, the international superstar violinist Itzhak Perlman received the prize in the music category).
By then an abstract painter, Alec Borenstein went on to study at the Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Alec Borenstein
La Vème symphonie de Beethoven (1965)
Oil on canvas
114cm x 146cm
Alec Borenstein
Maison abandonnée dans le Lot (1978)
Oil on canvas
40cm x 80cm
A decade later an important change took place: a return to figuration.
However, it was never a simple return to figuration. His work always modern, retaining elements of his abstract period. A good example here is the playing with elements of black-and-white colour contrast
Alec Borenstein
Le vin fou (1982)
Oil on canvas
60cm x 73cm
In the past 25 years Alec Borenstein has created a personal universe best explained in the artistic concept of series.
A Man of culture and confirmed artist, Alec Borenstein found a new way to look at the world. His works and style evolved from figurative to abstract, eventually reaching a modern realism with fantasizing undertones. His checkered tablecloth are playful games of transition between the abstract and the figurative styles, showing a will and eagerness to transcend the real. Without having to shout he conveys great things. Alec Borenstein strength and discretion are the marks of the greatest artists. Through his own world he achieves the universal.
Leon Abramovicz 1993
Alec Borenstein says, with ingenuousness, that what he desires is to reveal the invisible. For many this is a cliché, but in his case it is a "calculated" Art, notwithstanding the fact that it eludes calculation. An Art very "thought" but overflowed by the unthought. His genius, his secret, is the art of the double way, of the space in between, of the journeys always forked......the canvas moves forward and at each memorable step there is a junction: a choice between the "true" way and the "seductive" way which can have its specific truth; between the involvement of the being - of the other, the unconscious - and the involvement of the artist which is here present and is searching. Which road is he going to take?
Daniel Sibony 2000
Alec Borenstein gave a logical following to his "novel in images": painting from which the primeval element, the obsessional thought, is a cloth, a material with creases and double folds......The checkered tablecloth are from an optical virtuoso who takes as much pleasure in making the squares felt as in creating variations in colours and their intensity. Alec Borenstein creates some visible-invisible, some possible-impossible and let us see the paintings he has not painted.
Jean-Clarence Lambert 2000