Landscape II

Aviva Uri's early works display the pure, virtuoso line that characterized the art of David Hendler, with whom she studied and whom she later married. Her art evolved from the graphic to the painterly, from outer forms to the articulation of idiosyncratic symbols. Almost every single drawing of hers evinces a progression from mounting tension to the release thereof – a latent struggle between restraint and freedom, between inner turmoil and peace of mind. In this sheet the artist represents landscape, or the idea of landscape, in her typical ascetic style, emphasizing form and rhythm. The horizontal division she favored (in this case too) often implies a division between heavenly and earthly elements; the forms in the lower part of the sheet allude to the texture of earth, and the line, charged with emotion, becomes the actual subject in a manner that evokes Chinese or Japanese art.