In a traditional self portrait the painted figure – that is, the artist – is present both as subject and as object; the painter is cast in the double role of observer and observed; the gaze is at one and the same time that of the model and that of the artist looking at his or her own reflection at a narcissistic moment of self definition. The articulation of the artist’s image through his or her own unique style and painterly language is yet another aspect of the expression of self. For it is also the gaze of a professional painter turned on the viewer, aware not only of the artist’s internal and external self but also of the world beyond and the portrait’s ability to represent, in addition to mental and emotional aspects, social and professional characteristics. Therefore, for instance, the representational form of the artist’s portrait at work in his studio, holding his brushes by the easel, conveys a statement regarding the professional status of the figure portrayed, pointing to it as part of a distinguished line of artists. This representational form also results in visual images of ars-poetica themes related o the creative process itself, such as the illusion inherent in artistic representation, the gap between signifier and signified, mechanisms of vision and perception, etc.[1] Such themes are aimed at reflection about the art work itself and the mechanisms of its making. The artist’s gaze, directed forward at us, the viewers, and meeting our own gaze as we look at the painting, makes present the way by which an art work is perceived. It does so both by demonstrating the artistic practice of an artist observing the subject of his painting in order to depict it and by reverberating it in reflecting our own act of observation. In doing so it ignifies the artist’s self awareness of the act of creation and its illusory nature.
An identification of the female figure in Haim Gliksberg’s painting Portrait of a Woman in the Studio (1937) as Lea Nikel led to my personal acquaintance with her.[2] This portrait is a depiction of Nikel as a young, elegant woman sitting in the studio with her legs crossed, surrounded by her paintings, easel and canvases. The portrait shows her at the heart of her professional space, the studio – which would change places in years to come, moving with her over and over again from city to city and from country to country: Paris, New York, Rome, Tel Aviv, Safed, Jaffa, Ashdod, and finally Moshav Kidron.
Nikel worked incessantly, wherever she lived, almost until the last year of her life.[3] Gliksberg (1904 –1971) was Nikel’s first painting teacher. She studied under him at the age of sixteen (in 1934) after leaving the modern dance lessons she had taken at Gertrud Kraus’s studio.[4] It was a rather conservative place in which to study art – and Nikel’s early paintings are accordingly characterized by realistically depicted portraiture. Before leaving this studio and traveling through the abstract fields of contemporary painting in the studio of New Horizons painters Avigdor Stematsky and Yehezkel Streichman, she familiarized herself under Gliksberg’s tutelage with the rudiments of figurative painting. She may have also adopted some of the older painter’s modes of life, such as the way he dedicated himself to art and to the company of his contemporary men of letters and culture.
In two of Nikel’s early, small self portraits one may clearly distinguish the (nonspecific) facial features of a young woman, portrayed in colorful stains by the discernable touch of brush on canvas. One is signed by her first name only, “Lea,” and the other, in Latin letters, is signed “Nikelsparg,” the artist’s original family name before she shortened it and made it more Hebrew-sounding. These signatures may be seen as analogous to the state of development of her artistic language prior to its maturation. In later years her signature was to become a familiar, typical identifying sign, whose form was a pithy representation of the artist’s presence from the 1960s onward.[5]
The current exhibition endeavors to point to Nikel’s personal, direct presence as a woman artist in three abstract bodies of works she produced over many years. Each of them is informed by a distinctly apparent creative means which presences the painter in the painting.
One group of works includes numerous finger prints in a variegated palette. The artist’s hand stains the canvas directly with the most basic, immediate, unique means of identification, presencing both the artist and the act of painting. The finger prints charge the painting with the tempo and physical dynamism of hands-on, direct smearing of paint. This is an active woman artist at work, represented by painting which references the “action painting” of predominantly male Abstract Expressionism.
In another group of works a prominent element is the actual name of the artist, the creator, the progenitor of the piece: Lea Nikel. It is not the name with which she was born, but rather a conscious, independent choice on her part. Nickel[6] is the name of a hard metal which is also malleable. It originates from the mineral nickeline (or niccolite), which may serve a pigment, for instance of a yellow called Titanium Nickel, or, in another composition, of a corrosive green. The name is further charged with meaning – in a clearly professional context – in light of Nikel’s being a colorist painter. The name Lea Nikel often appears as a double signature on the canvas. At times the signature is in Hebrew letters, at other times in Latin ones, mostly in print style but sometimes in cursive. In all the works in this group the artist’s signature is a distinctive, autonomous expression on the canvas. By tradition, a signature marks the artist’s approval that the work is finished. It is a “trademark” of sorts, representing the creative self (from Robert Rauschenberg to Moshe Kupferman), as well as an expression of the artist’s distinct hand, like a drawing with its own formal values.[7]
The autonomous status of the signature in these paintings is attested to by various characteristics: its position (at times at the very center of the composition), being framed and surrounded by color, written from top to bottom, or drawn in colors distinct from the painting’s overall palette.
A third group of works contains another tangible expression of Nikel as a woman and artist. Nikel combined in these works fragments of the dresses she wore while painting. The pieces of fabric are stained with leftover or sprayed paint, traces of Nikel’s habit of absentmindedly wiping her hands and brushes on her clothes. Although Nikel usually painted in work clothes (such as coveralls), the pieces of fabric she combined in her paintings are from dresses. These are not work dresses made of simple fabrics but rather fancy ones, with strong, inspiring, colorful prints, such as checkered patterns or pink-and-red flowers against a bright-blue background.
According to her granddaughter, Mira Hanan-Avgar,[8] on returning home from a night out Nikel would forget that she should change from her fancy dress clothes before returning to work, and so, with the first paint stain the festive dresses were turned into work frocks. When it was no longer possible to wear them for all the accumulating, hardened paint, she would cut them up and integrate them into her paintings. One can easily see how these fabrics function within Nikel’s intensive compositions of color and form. But at the same time one can hardly fail to see them as a direct, immediate physical integration of her self in the painting, making her present within it as a woman artist. Regarded in the context of her time Nikel stands out as a total artist, who for long periods of times would leave behind her traditional roles as wife and mother and devote herself fully to art. In this context it is also clear why in interviews she habitually defined herself by the masculine form of the Hebrew word for artist, oman, rather than as a woman artist. She did so out of a desire for serious professional recognition, such as women did not usually receive. However, a renewed reading of the works on view in the current exhibition, marking ten years to her death, allows us to rediscover Nikel’s hand as portraying both a feminine identity and a powerful presence of an important, complex artist.

[1] See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966) (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).
[2] For an elaboration see Aya Lurie, Treasured in the Heart: Haim Gliksberg’s Portraits (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2005), p. 112.
[3] Among the great number of articles and catalogues about Nikel’s work let me point out Yona Fischer, Lea Nikel: Paintings (Jerusalem: Bezalel National Museum, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum, 1961); Yigal Zalmona, Lea Nikel (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1985); Michael Sgan-Cohen, Lea Nikel: A Retrospective (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1995); Sorin Heller, Lea Nikel: The Paris Years, 1950-1961 (Haifa: Mané-Katz Museum, 2004).
[4] Nikel became acquainted with Gliksberg on the recommendation of her friends Mina Sisselman, Ahuza Weiss, and Aviva Margalit, who were taking painting lessons from him.
[5] Nikel attributed great importance to the name as an expression of the artist’s independence and autonomy. A statement by Nikel to that effect was relayed to me in conversation by her friend G.R
[6] In Hebrew, Lea Nikel’s name and the metal’s are spelled the same.
[7] Yona Fischer, Moshe Kupferman: Works from 1962 to 2000, exh. cat. (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 2002), pp. 105-124 (Hebrew).
[8] Mira Hanan-Avgar is currently in charge of Nikel’s estate.

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