Artist Profile
Menashe Kadishman
In his youth, between 1950 and 1953, Kadishman worked as a shepherd on Kibbutz Ma’ayan Baruch. This experience with nature, sheep and shepherding had a significant impact on his later artistic work and career. The first major appearance of sheep in his work was in the 1978 Venice Biennale, where Kadishman presented a flock of colored liv
In his youth, between 1950 and 1953, Kadishman worked as a shepherd on Kibbutz Ma’ayan Baruch. This experience with nature, sheep and shepherding had a significant impact on his later artistic work and career. The first major appearance of sheep in his work was in the 1978 Venice Biennale, where Kadishman presented a flock of colored live sheep as living art. In 1995, he began painting portraits of sheep by the hundreds, and even thousands, each one different from the next. These instantly-recognizable sheep portraits soon became his artistic “trademark”.