Jacob El-Hanani

Born Casablanca, Morocco, 1947

El-Hanani trained at the Avni School of Fine Arts, Tel Aviv, 1965-9, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1969-70.When he was six he moved from Morocco to Israel, where at an early age he began work as a political cartoonist. In 1972, in Paris, he moved away from figurative art, and in 1974 he travelled to New York, where he came under the influence of Minimalism and the American artist Sol LeWitt (b.1928). El-Hanani's works, principally on paper, display minute linear elements methodically arranged to culminate in elaborate compositions. He values the process of execution and one drawing may take months to be completed. His works have been exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe and Israel, including the forty-seventh biennial at the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington DC,2002, and Recent Acquisitions, Works on Paper, Museum of Modern Art, New York,2003. He lives and works in New York.