Zohar Tal Inbar (Born 1964 in Kibbutz Mizra Israel)

Lives and works in Alon Hagalil

Tal Inbar’s artistic education began with private painting sessions in Eli Shamir’s studio in Moshav Kfar Yehoshua and continued with studies at the Oranim Art Institute, at the Haifa University, and finally in Israel’s Hershberg’s drawing and painting workshop JSS (Jerusalem Studio School). Tal Inbar’s dedication to painting at that time in her life met a deep-seated need. Specifically, she describes her learning experience in Jerusalem as having filled her entire world:

“We mixed colors to capture precisely the tone of each object when the light falls on it, and the tone of the shade in front of it. It’s hard to explain how it opens up the soul to deal only with that – and at the same time how it erases the rest of the world. It all boiled down to depicting an object placed partly in light and partly in shade, its color tone, how the part where light and shade meet looks like, and how the border between the color patches looks like. It became the question of my life.”

A turning point occurred when painting encountered reality, she recruited the technique honed over the years to describe mental experiences that demanded a painterly voice of her own.

“Kibbutz Basilica” was an extension of this move, where the craft of painting merged with the great story of her life, centered on her father’s arrival in the kibbutz, his encounter with her mother and her own birth.
This monumental painting is characterized by the merger of two painting languages and ideologies: the realist, as taught by Shamir and Hershberg, and that of the kibbutz, imbued in her as a child and reexamined as an adult years later. The kibbutz experience, also articulated in her preoccupation with the “big family” that shaped her personality, is evident in the inspiration Tal Inbar draws from the kibbutz painters of the 1940s-60s, And quite a few painterly moments inspired by classical European artists such as Titian (“Bacchus and Ariadne”), Nicola Poussin (“Bacchanal before a Statue of Pan”), Diego Velázquez (“The Feast of Bacchus”), and Franz Marc (“The Blue Horse”).

Zohar Tal Inbar participated in many group exhibitions in Israel and abroad, including Barcelona (MEAM Museum) And National Portrait Gallery in London UK.

In 2024 She participated The Herbert smith Freehills award group exhibition at National Portrait Gallery London, With a portrait of Yotam Haim who was kidnaped by Hamas terrorists on October 7. Later on, Yotam was accidently killed by Israeli soldier with two other hostage friends. Tal Inbar named this portrait: ‘A young man of light and gold’.

The portrait was purchased by the Tel Aviv museum of art and is now on permanent display in ‘Material Imagination: Inflamed Nerve’ group exhibition of Israeli art collection, curated by Dalit Matatiahu.

‘Kibbutz Basilica’ Is her first Solo exhibition, and was displayed in several Art Galleries and Museum: ‘Haamakim’ Gallery, Ein-Harod Mishkan Museum, Kibbutz Hatzor, and Kibbutz Gesher Haziv.
(Quotes from ‘Between Languages’ by Yaniv Shapira)