Artists - Part 43

 Raphael Perez

Raphael 'Rafi' Perez, born in 1965, is an Israeli painter known for his bold landscape paintings of cities in Israel and for his gay art.  Above is a photo of him at a gay cruising spot.

For those who prefer the rear view, here's the artist from the rear.

It took a while for him to come to terms with his homosexuality.  Initially his paintings showed relationships between men and women.  He also did a series of flower paintings as metaphors for these relationships, all having flowers that were wilted like the painting above.  Evidently his heterosexual relationships, or his view of them, left something to be desired.

In 1997 he began painting colorful urban landscapes in what he calls a 'naive' or simplified style.  He has produced  a large number of these paintings and has become known for them.  Most of them, like the painting above, represent Tel Aviv, where he lives, although he has also done similar paintings of Jerusalem, New York, and other cities.

Also in 1997, he came out of the closet and began painting gay subjects.  At first, Perez did not reveal the faces of his subjects.

Then he became more comfortable with showing everything.

He even produced a series of cartoonish drawings of gay sex.

The painting above is called Gay Parade, 2000.

Though most of his work is in a primitive or 'naive' style, Perez is an accomplished artist, fully capable of producing photo-realistic paintings such as the 2003 self-portrait above.

But his preferred style is simplified and dramatic.  I was puzzled by the painting above – what did he mean by "enter here"?

Then I saw him posing with this work, which is clearly a painting of a web page (a rather pornographic web page), with "Enter" and "Exit".  Now the previous painting makes sense: it's a web page, too.  I must say that's a new twist: having paintings showing web pages rather than vice-versa.

We end with Assaf Henigsberg, his boyfriend since 2013, standing in front of two paintings for which I assume Assaf was the model.