Boaz Vaadia

Boaz Vaadia’s style has evolved into figurative forms created with layers of chiseled stone and reflects the eternal relationship between man and nature. The figures appear as though created by natural forces, such as erosion by wind or water. He said, “By using the natural forces of rocks, my work awakens ancient ‘earth senses’ that were slowly abandoned by man during his evolution to civilization. By carving the stone, I release its inherent energies. Man came from the earth and in death returns to it. I see stone as the bone structure of the earth.”

Born in Gat Rimon in 1951, Vaadia grew up in a rural community where his parents, Nissim Vaadia and Rivka Horozlaski, farmed strawberries. In 1968, he enrolled at the Avni Institute of Fine Arts in Tel Aviv but was drafted into the Israeli Army just a year later. After completing his service, he returned to school and began teaching there after graduating. In 1975, with a grant from America-Israel Cultural Foundation, he relocated to New York, where he studied at the Pratt Institute. The artist said he thought the move was “the worst mistake of my life,” but “within one week I actually recognized that the urban environment of New York is as natural as my village.”