Nov 16, 2021 - Sale 2588

Sale 2588 - Lot 300

Price Realized: $ 5,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
JACOB EL HANANI
Untitled.

Ink on canvas, 1976. 450x450 mm; 18x18 inches.

Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist, New York, through Galerie Denise René, New York, with the label on the frame back; private collection, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Exhibited: "Jacob El Hanani," Galerie Denise René, New York, April 23-May 21, 1977.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, "Jacob El Hanani was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1947 and grew up in Israel. His work draws upon the tradition of micrography in Judaism, a technique utilized in decoration and transcribing holy texts. El Hanani creates highly intricate works through the painstaking repetition of minuscule marks, often Hebrew letters repeated thousands of times using ink on paper or canvas. The repetition represents a prayer, or Tehilim. Tehilim refers to a collection of 150 Psalms that express thanks, beseech, praise, love and fear, for God. He draws these images without magnification; in order to reduce eye strain, he rests every ten minutes. The end result is a work of extraordinary detail that appears to be a pattern from a distance, and speaks of the passage of time and the link between the microscopic and the infinite."