Heddy Breuer Abramowitz

Born in 1954

Israele/USA

https://heddyabramowitz.com/

date of insertion in W.A.D. 06/2023

Biography

I am an Israeli-American multidisciplinary artist and writer. I work primarily as an observational painter with strong interests in drawing, collage and photography. Recurrent themes include urban landscape, Jerusalem beyond the cliché, introspective self-portraits, the Jewish woman, the immigrant experience and the Holocaust as legacy.

Born in Brooklyn, NY to European parents, I was raised as a secular Jew in a normative modest suburb of Washington, D. C., still semi-rural with sprawling low-rise apartment projects and strip malls. I attended public schools and early on knew my calling was to be an artist, though this was discouraged by my practical-minded refugee parents. 

After my formal education including a BA in International Government at Jesuit-run Georgetown University followed by a JD in law, I completed professional credentials, qualifying as an attorney in Maryland. In my mid-20s I first visited Israel in 1979, strengthened my grasp of the Hebrew language and prepared for and was later admitted to the Israel Bar Association.

I set out to fill gaps in my education, both in my Jewish identity and in the visual arts.

Fairly soon too, my personal life progressed with marriage and the commitment to leading an Orthodox Jewish life, including raising our family of five children.

I keyed into the gap between pastoral Jerusalem of clichéd imaginings of my youth and the reality of a neglected urban city center far from my preconceptions. Breaking the conventions of Jerusalem imagery preoccupied me.

My interests shifted to the allegorical potential of the urban setting, as street crossings took on the aspects of safety versus danger, with the backdrop of the violent Intifadas. Suicide bombings took place within close proximity of my downtown studio, shattering glass and nerves. I refrained from using them as a direct motif.

Some of these paintings alluded to mini-morality plays or frozen scenes with implied social import. I continued exploring the street crossings as reflections of personal autobiographical challenges, particularly in the aftermath of the death of our adult daughter to illness, diagnosed shortly after her wedding.

Personal meanings were often subliminal undertones in seemingly mundane settings, imbuing my paintings with my outlook. I was not satisfied with reproducing a motif from observation. I sought a reason to propel me to pursue a subject; the purpose to create it became central.

My explorations in self-portraiture became less about reproducing a likeness and more about reflecting my interior emotional landscape. I strayed from traditional materials and used more personal material. I repurposed a well-used studio apron as a woman artist’s  “super-strength cape.” This reflects my sense that each new CV line felt like a heroic achievement.

Though not a comic book character, women have many metaphorical demons to battle: institutional and cultural bias against women, biological clock struggles to choose a family alongside an art career, work-life balance issues, economic struggles to pursue an art practice without public support, and the many significant life tensions in the sub-trata of the art terrain.

I embarked upon social activism through writing. I blogged on Times of Israel, an online English website (2012-2019), and for my personal blog “Golden Ochre: Art and Jerusalem” (no longer online). I reviewed art exhibits in English, with the intent of bringing the vibrant Jerusalem art scene to wider audiences, often highlighting exhibits by women artists.

An outgrowth of this is my involvement as a member of the Advisory Board for the organization Studio of Her Own, since its inception in 2010. It is based in Jerusalem’s cultural triangle as a women’s art center in a historic building. After initial renovations for the decades-long neglected property, it has rotating exhibits by women, a gift shop selling artwork by Jerusalem women and a popular coffee shop.

In 2023, I published a book recounting my efforts to self-rehabilitate after our daughter’s passing, titled Life-Tumbled Shards, incorporating self-portrait monotypes and my text created in the seven years after her demise. It was offered to the public at the In Print Art Book Fair in Jerusalem as a limited edition artist’s book. I am seeking a publisher for this book saoi that it can reach a broader readership.

I continue to write and edit at The Jerusalem Post, and live and work in Jerusalem.

Curriculum

SOLO EXHIBITS
2015 Cross Point, Artists’ House, Tel Aviv
2014 Intersections, Artspace Gallery (part of the Manofim Art Project)
2014 Dusks, Artspace Gallery, Jerusalem
2005 Twilights, Artspace Gallery, Jerusalem
2000 In Light of the Situation, The Artists House, Jerusalem
1996 Clips Drawn From Life, The Jerusalem Theatre Gallery, Jerusalem

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITS
2023 Holy Sparks exhibit, the Margolis Gallery, Congregation Beth Israel, Houston, Texas
2022 Wonder Woman, Marie Gallery, Jerusalem
2022 Femininity in Spirit, Matter and What Lies Between Them, Moshe Castel Museum, Ma’aleh Adumim, catalogue
2022 Holy Sparks, Dr. Bernard Heller Museum, Hebrew Union College, New York City, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles
2021 Authenticity and Identity, Curator Dr. Ori Z. Soltes, Adas Israel Synagogue, Washington, DC
2021 Artspace Story, Artspace Gallery, Jerusalem and – 48: Creative Quarantine Exhibit, Kol HaOt Gallery, Hutzot Hayozer, Jerusalem
2020 I am. an Immigrant. Institut für Alles Mögliche, Berlin, Germany, catalogue.
2019 Shalom Bayit, The 4th Jerusalem Biennale (and Manofim Project), catalogue
2019 Relative/Relations, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Museum, New York City
2019 Her Dress, Her Symbol: Return to Antea, Agripas 12 Gallery, Jerusalem
2019 Embroidered Scaffolds, Hansen House Center for Design, Media and Technology, Jerusalem, catalogue
2017-18 Home, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Museum, New York City
2017-18 Salon (second biannual), HaCubia Gallery, (Manofim Art Project) Jerusalem
2016 Autumn at Artspace, Jerusalem
2015 A Fine Line, The Jerusalem Biennale, Achim Hasid Complex, Jerusalem, catalogue
2015 A Sense of Place, A Sense of Space, The Jerusalem Biennale, Achim Hasid Complex, Jerusalem
2014 The Seventh Day: Shabbat Revisited, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Museum, New York City (traveling exhibition)
2013 Touched by the Holocaust, Synagogue for the Arts Gallery, New York City
2013 Salute to our Heroes, Yad L’Banim, Tel Aviv (traveling)
2012-13 The Sexuality Spectrum, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Museum, New York City (2014 Sherwin Miller Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma; 2013 Philadelphia Jewish Museum), catalogue
2011 Black and White, Red House Gallery, Tel Aviv
2011 Sixteen Israeli-American Artists, Skizze Gallery, Jerusalem, catalogue
2011 Signed Personally: Artists Creating after the Holocaust, Beit Gavriel, Tiberius
2011 The Jewish Quarter: Seeing Places and Creations, Jerusalem Municipal Gallery
2010 Limmudarts, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, England
2009 Housewives and Heroines, Antea Gallery, Jerusalem (Project Initiator and Manager), catalogue
2008-2009 Our Remembrances (Zichroneinu), Beit Hayil HaAvir, Herzliyah, sponsored by Ministry of Defense for 60th anniversary of Israel (traveling exhibition)
2008 Personal Space, Private Views, Yakar Gallery, Jerusalem, catalogue
2008 Man and Earth, Oman Gallery, The Jerusalem Foundation, Jerusalem, catalogue
2007 International Jewish Artists of the Year Award, Christie’s, London, England, catalogue
2007 Journey to the World of American Culture, Skizze Gallery, Jerusalem
2006 Women at Work, Hadassah Berry Gallery, Jerusalem
2005 Walking on Eggs, The Corrine Mammon Ashdod Museum of Art, Ashdod
2004 Traces II (Biennale in Drawing), The Artists House, Jerusalem, catalogue
2004 Group Show, Artspace Gallery, Jerusalem
2004 It’s Me, Yakar Gallery, Jerusalem
2003 Self Portrait, Gallery, Artist Colony, Ein Hod
2002 Art Fair, Park Avenue Synagogue, New York City
2001 Traces – Drawing in Israel Now (Biennale), The Artists House, Jerusalem
2000 33 X 33, The Artists House, Jerusalem, catalogue
1999 Master Class, The Artists House, Jerusalem; The Noga Gallery, Tel Aviv
1999 Landscape Workshop with George Nick, The Artists Residence, Herzliya
1999 Faith in Art, The Popolos Gallery, Dizengoff Center, Tel Aviv; The Gerard Behar Center, Jerusalem, catalogue (curator: Amitai Mendolsohn)
1995 Global Focus Beijing, China; during the Fourth International Congress of Women and in association with the National Museum of Women in the Arts; Washington, D. C.
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS AND COMMISIONS

2003 Omanut L’Am (Art for the People), drawing
2000 The Hebrew University, two oil paintings purchased for the Permanent Collection of the University, Office of the Rector
1998 The Shomer Shabbat Synagogue, Ark Curtain, Toronto, Canada

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
Has work in private collections in Australia, Canada, England, France, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Mexico, and the United States