David Gerstein (Israeli artist)

In 1995, after years of working with wood, Gerstein discovered the technology of laser cutting and began cutting metals and painting them in glossy paint taken from the car industry. On this he collaborated with Rosenfeld Gallery in Tel Aviv.

Gerstein returned to Bezalel and applied printmaking into enamel technique. Already then, his tendency to integrate different mediums and advanced technologies in creating art was discernable; a tendency that was reflected more strongly in his use of laser in the 1990s. He continued in his position as senior lecturer at Bezalel until 1985.

While continuing to develop his sculpture in the '90s, Gerstein returned to painting in the style that constituted a direct link to the balconies and the Dead Sea series, depicted in the '70s and '80s. The series of automobiles created during this period presents people traveling in a car from the perspective of the spectator "peeping" in at the passengers through the front windshield. Similar to the motif of peeping into Tel Aviv balconies, here too, Gerstein chose the perspective of the outsider looking at the driver through the windshield, while at the same time reflecting the surroundings in the reflections on the windshield. The series was created in Paris during Gerstein's residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, 1990–1991.

His art was shown in museums around the world, beginning in Israel Museum in 1987. In 2016 he won Taiwan's Artistic Creation Award. His sculptures of bicycle riders were purchased by Lance Armstrong, and were mentioned in Stephen King's writings. His outdoor sculpture "Momentum" is Singapore's tallest public sculpture.

In 1984 Gerstein traveled to New York, the first time since the conclusion of his studies there fifteen years earlier, and began working with the art dealer Marilyn Goldberg, who ordered the production of six limited edition aluminum prints titled "Art Cats". The series included cutouts of cats inspired by those of twelve known artists, from van Gogh to Picasso and Lichtenstein. In the wake of these works, Gerstein was invited to show at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The exhibit in 1987 was presented under the heading, "From Dudu to 3-D", comprising sculptures that were "colorful, cheerful, amusing and reminiscent of toys or paper cutouts". The exhibit was a summary of Gerstein's three-dimensional work of the previous seven years and was a breakthrough for the artist. Most of the exhibited work was purchased by international collectors and Gerstein was subsequently invited to exhibit in the United States and Canada.

Gerstein first showed these sculptures at the Horace Richter in Tel Aviv in 1981. This was a bold step for the 36-year-old painter who had not been known for sculpture previously. The works were of aluminum and wood, and the subject matter was a continuation of that of the 1970s: his mother riding a bicycle, cats, flower vases and various still life elements.

From 1980 to 1995 he created mostly free-standing wooden sculptures, which he later abandoned when he found lazer-cutting technology. By that he pioneered the use of laser cutting in art, and was the first artist to use multi-layered cutout steel wall-sculptrues.

Gerstein's aim to portray the daily experience of Israeli life came to fruition in the 1980s. Gerstein figuratively describes chapters from the Israeli experience, derived, among others, from childhood memories in Tel Aviv. The first series depicts Tel Aviv with its Bauhaus-style balconies, with a humoristic irony. This series was based on Gerstein's memories of his parents' generation of "little Tel Aviv"; people whom he regarded with wonder and humor. These paintings express the tension between the sabra generation of the children and the relatively "exilic" generation of the parents.

Despite the positive response his paintings evoked, both from the critics and the art world, Gerstein felt the need to renew, find new directions and expand his artistic boundaries. During 1980–1987, while continuing to paint, Gerstein experimented with wood sculptures, which were "three-dimensional while preserving a two-dimensional quality". Gerstein sought to "expand the borders of painting" to the domain of the third-dimension. Dissatisfied with his few sculpting experiments, the artist discovered that he could cut and assemble the elements into a type of sculpture in space. The idea came to him during reserve duty while dismantling cardboard boxes containing cartridges. He painted on the inner partition of a box and then reassembled it. From this evolved the idea of painting on large-scale cardboard constructed into sculpture. Following a number of sculptures from cardboard, Gerstein used wood and thin aluminum. Gerstein defines those years as a "struggle" between painting and sculpture, comparing his relationship to painting as that to a wife, as opposed to his relationship to sculpture: a seductive lover.

Shortly after beginning to work with one layer laser cutout, he began experimenting with adding one additional metal cutout layer. Using screws, he secured the second layer to the first, and was immediately "taken" by the technique: "From early on I tried to create three dimensional paintings, which is what led me to wood sculptures in the early 1980s. Suddenly, fifteen years later, I finally found the perfect way to create a three dimensional painting, floating above the wall, breathing, living. It was, for me, an eureka moment. I knew from that moment on that I'd like to further develop this medium."

Gerstein's first exhibition in Israel was held in 1971 at the Engel Gallery in Jerusalem, comprising figurative drawings and watercolors. Thereafter, he exhibited at Jerusalem's Artist's House in 1972 with large oil paintings dealing with interiors and the seaside, work that received enthusiastic reviews. Among others, Gerstein was compared to David Hockney due to the fact that "like Hockney, he, too, had been first and foremost a master drawer with an excellent color sense".

In the 1970s, Gerstein explored the integration of personal themes alongside figurative painting, particularly in his watercolors and gouache on paper. His works stemmed not from the political realm, nature or science, but rather from early personal memories of family and growing up. At first, these works were intended as sketches for large canvas oil paintings. With time, though, he found interest in working in watercolors on paper only, and they became his main medium. Gerstein created a series of paintings concerning his childhood based on photographs and memories. Another series dealt with the memory of freedom: his mother riding a bicycle in the streets, a motif that developed into a series of bicycle riders in the 1990s and afterward. Another series of paintings focused on interior settings of personal living spaces such as living rooms, in French tradition. A repetitive motif in these works was that a cat, as well as a vase, which, for the artist, expressed, "the serenity of daily home life."

From the 1970s, Gerstein aspired to create art that spoke to the art world while remaining accessible to the layman in the street. His bold use of color came from a desire to "copy nature." His bold use of colors in sculptures came out of his own philosophy. Gerstein explained that just like the brightly colored fruit or flower in nature attracts insects, so, too, his work was intended to be attractive to the observer; and as the fruit is not solely an object of attraction, but is also a source of vitamins, so, too, his works contain added value. "I expressly deal with images of consumerism and the lure of the color is strategic." His work "Shoe Mania", portraying a woman whose hair is composed of shoes is colorful but expresses criticism of Western consumerism. Gerstein maintains "there can be art for pleasure's sake in which its deeper message is hidden."

After the 1968 revolution in France two years in Paris, he moved to New York and attended classes of the Art Students League, where he learned portrait painting under William F. Draper, and oil painting under Jacob Lawrence.

In 1965 Gerstein enrolled in Israel's leading art academy Bezalel at the graphic design department, as there was no art department at the time. After two years he realized that graphic design did not interest him. Having had a dream to visit Paris from an early age, he sailed to France and in 1966, enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied under Chapelain-Midy [fr].

In 1955, at age 11, David was introduced to modern art when he saw, in a newspaper, a reproduction of Picasso's Guernica. The reproduction ignited his interest in modern art movements such as cubism and expressionism. He continued to frequent museums and galleries as a teenager.

David (Dudu) Gerstein (Hebrew: דוד (דודו) גרשטיין) (born 14 November 1944) is an Israeli painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker. He began as a figurative painter and was recipient of the Israel Museum Prize for illustration. At the end of the 1970s he wished to expand the limits of two-dimensional painting, into painting in three-dimensions. He began cutting out the main subjects of each painting and to cancel the background, creating a unique and iconic cutout images, free standing in space, without the standard and traditional square frame.

David (Dudu) Gerstein was born in 1944 in Jerusalem to parents who immigrated from Poland. Both he and his twin brother, Jonathan (Yoni) Gerstein, showed artistic talent from an early age. At the age of thirteen he was sent to a camp for the arts in Jerusalem, which he attended for several summers in a row. Later he took classes at the Beit Zvi Art Center in Ramat Gan.