Yaacov Agam’s kinetic art always made you stop and stare. And then move and stare. And then walk back and forth, noting how it changed with every angle. His work engaged the viewer in an intimate and joyous dance. Every meeting with it, whether the iconic panels of saturated colors were at a museum or in a city square, was wonderfully immersive, spiritual and celebratory.
The artist, who passed away last week at age 98, was perhaps best known for the gorgeous Fire and Water Fountain in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square (a fountain that unfortunately has been missing the colorful triangles that used to adorn it since it was relocated to street level) and for designing the colorful facade of Tel Aviv’s Dan Panorama. His art has been displayed far and wide, from the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel, to the Pompidou Center and the Élysée Palace in Paris, to the Guggenheim and the MoMA. He was awarded the Israel Prize for Art, the country’s highest honor, earlier this year.
Agam was born in Mandatory State Palestine in 1928, and spent time in jail during the British rule for his participation in Operation Agatha. A graduate of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, he was known for his colorful kinetic art. He began having commercial success while living in Paris, where a fountain he designed is the centerpiece of La Defense Square. He was living in Paris with his second wife, harpist Chantal Thomas d’Hoste, at the time of his passing, and is survived by his three children from his first marriage.
At his funeral, Agam was remembered as a man who taught us a “new way to look at the world” by friends and acquaintances, including the mayor of Rishon LeZion, where he lived in Israel, and where you can visit the Yaacov Agam Museum of Art.
“You spoke about dad, the artist, and I want to speak about the man,” his daughter, Orit, said at his funeral. “My dad was kind to every person, but tough in the same measure. He fought for love from his childhood, for his whole life. Love was always important to him. I realized in the last few years that he gets things with his sixth sense and that they’re all true. He began his breakthrough in art because of love. In his last moments, he got to be surrounded by love, and that’s one of the things I want him to be remembered for, not just his great works”
“I was asked what I’ll remember of him,” his son, artist Ron Agam, shared in an improvised speech. “His smile, his face, his special regard. His wisdom, his demeanor, which were for me things to carry on. He had great charisma. My father was a Jewish Israeli man who grew up in Rishon LeZion and raised himself in the sand dunes until he got to school. A few weeks ago, he told me, in one of our conversations, I’m 97 and still discovering my father, who was the source of my strength.”
Agam was known for being as colorful and people-loving as his craft. When Israeli model Agam Rudberg approached him at an event to tell him she was named after him and that they should be friends, he acquiesced. The two formed a fast friendship and met all over the world, but Rudberg said her favorite thing was to sit with him at her moshav and to listen to him talk.
“As far as I was concerned, a man with infinite wisdom sat in front of me, and I just wanted to take in more and more,” Rudberg wrote on Instagram. “He didn’t just create art, but a language, one that connected color, movement, technology and Judaism. It’s a combination that left me stunned every time.” Rudberg urged the younger generation to learn more about the incredible artist, who was awarded a 1996 Jan Amos Comenius Prize for the “Agam Method,” a way to teach young children visual language.
Agam’s relationship to religion was central to his art. In 2022, he designed what was named the largest menorah ever made, erected outside New York’s Central Park. Jewish symbols and themes were often part of his creations, which can be found in many Jewish spaces across the world, like Hebrew Union College’s Petrie Synagogue. He also designed New Orleans’ Holocaust Memorial.
“I grew up with an instinctive sense of creativity, and that’s the basis of Judaism, the sense of creativity, that nothing stands in one place, that change is based on the viewer’s position, and things look different every time,” Agam told Times of Israel earlier this year.
“I got to meet him as a child, and he was a fascinating person, in every meeting with him, you could see the passion, the curiosity, and the endless creativity that were the cornerstones of his identity his whole life,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog wrote of Agam. “His artistic legacy and his humanity will remain a part of Israeli culture and of art lovers in Israel and the world for many years.”
I will, indeed, never stop dancing with Agam’s works wherever I find them. May his memory be for a blessing.
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