The Rubin Museum has recently received a very significant addition to its permanent collection: the painting "The Sea Shore in Tel Aviv" painted by Rubin in 1924 as he was observing the Mediterranean from the close by Geula Street.
The Painting has been gifted to the Rubin Museum by William and Sahra Lese of New York.
Rubin painted it 100 years ago, a year after settling in the young Tel Aviv with that same enthusiasm that characterizes his depictions during the early years of the Hebrew city spreading along the Mediterranean coast. Rubin felt liberated and invigorated, sharing on his canvases a new beginning. The single upright electrical pole right in the center of the scene is not there for any aesthetical merits, quite on the contrary, but rather as it represented the much craved technological progress and urban modernity aspired by its inhabitants.
Beyond its obvious naivete and beauty, the painting's provenance too carries a genuine Tel Aviv story, most particularly, the story of two ladies who were both former residents of Bialik street.
Rubin's painting hung for many years in the apartment of Chana and Avraham Polany, on Bialik st. no.17. The Polanys were close friends of the Rubins. In 1929 Chana was crowned as "The Hebrew Queen Esther" in the reputed Tel Aviv Purim balls organized by the dancer and film-maker Baruch Agadati.
Following Chana's passing in the mid-1990s' the painting was sold and subsequently purchased by another neighbor, Sahra (nee Binstock) who grew up on Bialik st. no. 7 and who in 1956 was elected Israel's national Beauty Queen. In this capacity Sahra Tal travelled to the United States to represent the young State of Israel in America.
Sahra stayed there, and years later the painting was her husband's gift to her, a compensation-of-sorts for her longing to where she came from.
Back on Bialik street thanks to the generosity of the Lese's, we are happy to share this optimistic Tel Aviv landscape with our public.
On display from March 21th
