Ilan Baruch

Ilan Baruch (Born in 1974, Jerusalem)

Ilan Baruch was born in 1974, to a religious family from the Geula neighborhood in Jerusalem. In 1988 he began his studies at the School of Painting and Sculpture founded by Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz, where he met painter Lillian Klapisch, who taught there at the time. In 1992 Klapisch exhibited his paintings at the “Nidbach” exhibition at the Artists’ House in Jerusalem.
In 2004 he displayed a solo exhibition name “The Cactus: Introspection’s ” at the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (curator: Aya Luria). In 2005 he had a solo exhibition at the Ashdod Museum of Art (curator: Yonah Fisher), In 2013 ” It was never truly a wilderness” solo exhibition at the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art and in 2020 ” Beneath The Foliage Awaits The Fall” at Hezi Cohen Gallery. Baruch participated in numerous group shows. In 2014 he exhibited in ” Blue-and-White Delfware”, Tel Aviv Museum of Art among others. In addition to the art studies of his youth, Baruch subsequently studied philosophy at the Hebrew University.

“Since 2001 the prickly pear  fills a central place in Ilan Baruch’s paintings. His accumulated paintings describing the prickly pear plant expresses an intensive visual investigation combined with a deep emotional step. The painting coalesce into a series that draws a fascinating, winding path leading the painter and his art from the rational, mimetic, outward-dependent dimension to an unrelenting introspective inquiry. The internal observation does not lose contact with the external object but presents itself in expressive abstraction while maintaining a constant affinity to the object. The process of transformation from the figurative to the abstract does not progress in a linear or chronological sequence  but is propelled by the emotional steps experienced by the painter.” (Aya Luria, ” The Cactus: Introspections”, 2004