Museum Cinema / The Blue Lamb, 2005 / A Decade Since the Passing of Menashe Kadishman
The finest films on art and culture will be screened, after a short lecture by the Museum’s curators.
On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the passing of Menashe Kadishman (1932–2015), the Tel Aviv Museum of Art is honored to invite you to a special evening in memory of one of Israel’s most influential artists. The evening will open with remarks by Dalit Matatyahu, Senior Curator of Israeli Art, followed by a screening of The Blue Lamb, a film chronicling Kadishman’s life and work.
Admission to the Museum’s exhibitions is included in the film ticket, during the Museum’s opening hours.
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The Blue Lamb, 2005 | Dir. Dani Dotan & Dalia Mevorach | Israel, 2005 | Hebrew; English subtitles | 70 minutes
Introduction: Dalit Matatyahu, Senior Curator of Israeli Art
Menashe Kadishman—sculptor, painter, and Israel Prize laureate—is a natural cinematic protagonist: a primitive man in a modern world, a giant in little white trousers, half child, half old man, half genius, half clown. Kadishman did not shy away from the camera; he appears in the film in all his layered complexity. On one hand, he is a successful artist whose works are exhibited and sold worldwide; on the other, he embodies a Tel Aviv “street dweller,” constantly searching anew for the sustenance of daily life.
The film opens at 5 a.m. We enter his bedroom, where he sleeps surrounded by teddy bears and toys—the contrast between the 73-year-old giant and these childlike objects encapsulates the awakening essence of Menashe himself. By 5:30 a.m., he is at the Gordon Pool—embracing his elderly, naked friends in unabashed joy in the dressing room. At 7 a.m., he is in his studio, painting another sheep’s head—one more addition to the thousands of sheep he painted throughout his career.
Kadishman dedicated his life and art to transforming Israeli reality through powerful symbols—an angel bending over the dead Isaac, a mother lifting her child skyward, sheep’s heads, pecking crows—icons dripping with paint that became known worldwide. Yet, Kadishman was tormented by his perceived inability to change the reality in which parents sacrifice their children daily in a seemingly endless war. At night, defeated and orphaned, longing for his childhood world, he reads a farewell letter to his children—yet knows he must rise again in the morning and paint another sheep.
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