Eilat, Avraham (1939 - )

Avraham Eilat (Hebrew: אברהם אילת, born 1939 in Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine) is an Israeli artist, educator and curator. He graduated from the Hebrew Gimnasium Herzliya in Tel Aviv, and was enrolled in Hashomer Hatzair youth movement for nine years starting at age 9. After military service in 1960 he joined in Kibbutz Shamir, situated on the western slopes of the Golan Heights in the Upper Galilee, where he was a member until 1978. During his first years in the kibbutz, Eilat was a shepherd side-by-side with his kibbutz adopting father the painter Moshe Cagan. Close contact with nature and its phenomenon and the features of local landscape deeply influenced his way of thinking and established the themes appearing along all his career in his art. The contrast between man-made geometrical shapes of fish ponds and the free flowing of the flora and typical hilly landscape of the Hula Valley area, crystallized his visual language and determined its formal and thematic foundations. Avraham Eilat employs skillfully various means of expression: drawing and painting, etching, photography, sculpture, installation, and often a combination of more than one. Using those means enriches his basic statement and makes it complex and multi-layered. Avraham Eilat lives in Ein Hod Artists Village, Israel, with his spouse Margol Guttman, works in his studio in Pyramida Center of Contemporary Art, Wadi Salib, Haifa, and in his studio in Ein Hod.

• 1986 Co-founder of The Israeli Biennale of Photography, Ein Harod
• 1985–1987 Head of Photography Dept. Wizo Academy of Design, Haifa, Israel
• 1989–1991 Curator of photography, Haifa Museum of Art, Haifa, Israel
• 1994 Co-founder and chairman of Pyramida Centre for Contemporary Art, Haifa
• 1995–1999 Director of Pyramida Center of Contemporary Art
• 2000–2001 Director and chief curator of The Israeli Museum of Photography, Tel Hai
• 2003–2009 Director of Pyramida Center of Contemporary Art, Wadi Salib, Haifa
• Recently: curator of visual arts for the National Maritime Museum, Haifa