“There is an essence of the collective nostalgic yearning in these photographs, and also a childish homesickness. If the pictures are not personal, how is it that they make me yearn for a place I have never been to, whose name I do not know, whose language I do not speak? Childish nostalgia, the fantasy of a child who imagines he has been adopted and tries to be accepted, the fantasy at whose root lies a lack of identity, but also something optimistic. Nostalgia is a fantasy of belonging in another world.”

“The more you distance yourself from Berlin, or from the painting, the more complete they look. The picture becomes clearer, brighter, concise.”

Yigal Shtayim

1966 | Born in kibbutz Ma’agan Michael to parents who emigrated to Israel from Chile.
Grows up in Haifa and starts to draw and paint at the age of three.

1980-1984 | Studies art in Wizo-Canada, Haifa, focusing mainly on drawings.
Sources of inspiration: Egon Schiele, the Theater of the Absurd (Samuel Becket, Eugène Ionesco, Luigi Pirandello, among others), and minimal music.
“We discovered America”, first solo show (1983).

Already in high school he designs posters for jazz shows, has a column in a local newspaper and starts to sell his artworks.
1984-1987 | Military service.
1987 | Changes his last name to Shtayim.
He consciously chooses to avoid the academic lane, while separating his artistic activity from graphic, organizational and commercial work.
His sources of inspiration at that time are: Lucian Freud, Gerhard Richter, Francis Bacon and Robert Rauschenberg.

Artworks and exhibitions
1999 | Mural on an abandoned building, Wadi Nisnas, Haifa
1995 | Rabin’s Murder, mural, Tel Aviv
1999 | “Open House”, Beit Hageffen Gallery, Haifa
2002 | “Focus on Painting”, Haifa Museum of Art
2004 | “Our Country’s Landscapes”, Haifa University Art Gallery
2011 | “Publishing”, Haifa Museum of Art
2014 | “Youth”, Nuzha Gallery, Jaffa
2015 | Exhibition at the Cube Salon, Jerusalem