Press Review

Arturo Schwartz - benefactor to art and Israel
By Rick Radin - published on israel21c, April 22, 2002
Italian art collector Arturo Schwartz, the son of non-observant Jewish parents, was a strong backer of Israel and showed his support by donating his immense collection of Dada and Surrealist art to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 1998.
The collection, accumulated over Schwartz's years as an art historian, lecturer, art consultant and curator of international art exhibitions in Milan, is composed of more than 700 works by such Surrealist artists as Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Jean Arp. The works include paintings, sculptures, objects, drawings, prints, collages and photographs by more than 200 artists.
At the end of 2000, about 350 of the most significant pieces of the collection were put on display in a show at the Israel Museum under the title "Dreaming with Open Eyes." The same show is now at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco until April 28 as part of a three-venue world tour organized by the Israel Museum, which continues this summer at the Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. more

Survivor
Frightened, miserable and trying hard to be liked. This is the picture that emerges of the boy in Amos Oz's new book - though he says it's `not exactly an autobiography'
By Ari Shavit - published in Ha'aretz, Thursday, February 28, 2002
"The years have not spoiled his face. The bursts of wrinkles around his eyes only highlight his chiseled features. But now that he has finished writing "Sipur al Ahava ve'Hoshekh" ("A Tale of Love and Darkness"), Amos Oz isn't quite the same Amos Oz. He is no longer the sabra poster-boy or the shining icon of Israeliness. Now he is a 63-year-old Jewish grandfather watching his grandchildren and looking back on his parents and grandparents, and trying to decipher the story, trying to face the full horror of it.
"Sipur al Ahava ve'Hoshekh" (published by Keter) has already gone to press, and conversing with Oz is trickier than ever. It's not just his exhaustion after the book's difficult birth ("like giving birth to an elephant," as he describes it). It's not just anxiety - due to the fact that, with the book already printed, there's no going back now. There is still his insistence on not speaking on behalf of his books' protagonists, even when the protagonist is Oz himself, and even when the new book is, among other things, the story of his childhood." more