Bashir Abu Rabia: Colorful Shadow

At just 17 years old, Bashir Abu Rabia held his first exhibition, and since then has become one of the most intriguing and original artists in local culture, serving as a source of inspiration for many other artists and creators. Abu Rabia (b. 1951) was born in the territory of the Abu Rabee tribe in the Negev. That first exhibition in his youth, which launched his artistic journey, was held at what was then the Arad Museum—now the Arad Contemporary Art Center's gallery is its latest incarnation. Now, albeit belatedly, Colorful Shadow places Abu Rabia's work within the history of local and Arab art more broadly.

 

Following a period of international acclaim in the 1970s—in which Abu Rabia exhibited in Rome, Havana, Paris, Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Bethlehem—Abu Rabia reutrned to the Negev in the 1980s and became a special effects specialist for film, following his work on the set of Rambo III, itself filmed in the eastern Negev. Even today, his spacious studio, located in one of the Negev’s villages, is filled with prosthetics, stage props, and imitation materials—alongside the paintings and sculptures he has never stopped creating.

 

This exhibition focuses on two central elements in Abu Rabia's work: the unique mythological system he has developed and the painterly dynamics that have evolved throughout his career. The artist’s extraordinary personal mythology draws on folk tales, legendary heroes, human and animal figures, hybrid creatures, as well as horses and their riders, dogs, robots, and war machines. These characters and elements accompany the desert landscape, hovering beside and above it at all times. At times, they become the central subject of the painting, engaging in painterly duels and confrontations.

 

His paintings often feature surrealist compositions, futuristic elements, and dynamic, motion-driven forms reminiscent of Futurism. Yet through all of the works, modernist painting techniques—gesture, color, and lines—merge with the visual language of Bedouin culture, particularly the patterns and weaves of traditional embroidery and textiles. The forms of painterly abstraction are interwoven with folkloric textile designs, blending into a vibrant, mysterious, and richly dimensional visual experience.