'I am obsessed with edges, both in painting as with people' says Guy Yanai, the Israeli painter who plays obsessively with simplified forms, using vibrant colours and minimising depth. Structured in meticulously layered horizontal rectangular blocks or stripes, his linearly style that characterises his works, has become instantly famous.
Guy Yanai's subjects are extremely common, depicting plants, living rooms, suburban architecture or sailing boats.
Influenced in content and colour palette by modern cinema and a variety of notable artists of the 20th century as Henri Matisse, David Hockney or Philip Guston, Yanai borrows, appropriates easily from and is in awe and even confused (all simultaneously) by European visual culture and its rich heritage.
Guy Yanai was born in 1977 Haifa, Israel and lives and works in Tel Aviv. He grew up in Boston and attended Parsons The New School for Design, The New York Studio School (both New York), Pont Aven School of Art, Pont-Aven, France, and received a BFA in 2000 from Hampshire College, Amherst, MA. He has exhibited internationally in a number of institutions and galleries and has received special grants.
Yanai is one of the 50 most exciting artists in Europe today (ArtNet). Solo shows included ‘Ordinary Things’, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel (2015); ‘Battle, Therapy, Living Room’, The Velan Center for Contemporary Art, Turin (2013); and solo shows at Alon Segev Gallery, Tel Aviv. He exhibited at the Armory Show and Frieze Art Fair New York (both 2016) and Art Brussels and Art Cologne (both 2017).
Museum Collection
Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel
Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, Tel-Aviv. Israel
Public collection
Holtz Collection, New York
Vente-Privée, Paris
Ekard Collection, Wassenaar
Prometheus, Amsterdam
Van den Weghe, Zulte
Doeksen Consultancy, Wassenaar
Anita Zabludowicz collection, London.