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Benjamin Peleg is a consistent and authentic artist.  Using a unique language in his visual and written art he documents his personal experiences that intertwine with the collective experience of the Jewish People.

In a rational, clear and clean style he covers the canvas in expanses of color, combining “Hard Edge” abstract art with biomorphic forms. Numbers, bricks, structures, black and white checkered patterns, groups of stereotypical figures with a “Yellow Patch” and stereotypical heads of various sizes are blended in and around them. These elements provide the recurring symbolic aspect in all the visual presentations and make these paintings unique.  The biomorphic figures represent the female, the mother, appearing in different dimensions in the same creation, joining with the other elements, but usually being the larger of them.  Indeed, in the work of the dada-surrealist artist Jean Arp the biomorphic forms are evident, but there they appear solely as figures, lacking conceptual significance.  The “sharp angled” geometric forms (squares, rectangles, triangles, etc.) appear in the creations of many abstract-geometric artists including Kasimir Malevich, the father of “Suprematism”.  In Benjamin Peleg’s works they become part of a chessboard that turns our lives into a large game board, or to black and white tiles, bricks, or yellow triangles.  Numbers appear as a decorative element among Cubist painters and Pop Artists like Jasper Johns, but Benjamin Peleg’s art depicts them on the arm, or as a representation of human beings, as in the painting “Six Million” in which numbers and triangles are interspersed on a red, gray, yellow and orange background within bodies of animals, or in “The Final Road” where they appear together with triangles on a yellow background in an hourglass figure.  Chromatically, yellow, red and combinations of black and white appear with exceptional frequency in the works.  The symbolism-laden colors cast, according to Kandinsky’s definition in “On the Spiritual in Art”, shadows that are especially bold.   Notably, the chromatic scale also includes the other colors of the rainbow, adding a varied artistic touch to the paintings.  

The elements appear flat, recalling the anti-illusionist trend that began at the end of the nineteenth century and flourished in the early twentieth century, like in the works of Vuillard, Bonnard and Matisse.  The manner of combining them is reminiscent of puzzles or papiers collés (collages), similar to the art of the second phase of cubism (Synthetic Cubism) as can be found in the works of Picasso, Braque and Gris.
 
The profound difference between Benjamin Peleg and them stems from the content-experiential aspect.  Generally, the reference is to the artistic language form, whereas it is the content-experiential level that literally screams out in Benjamin Peleg’s art.  He constructs a theater whose props include the angular and rounded forms that act as a mercurial frame for antlike figures, set against a background of urban and/or imprisoned elements.  A dichotomy is created between colorful artistic forms that intermingle in different variations and the morbid contents anchored in the personal and collective history.

Despite the powerful contents, the works succeed in being perceived as works of art, where the artist composes a visual symphony encapsulating variations of decorative color and form combinations, brimming with imagination and energy.

Dr. Dalia Hakker-Orion

Art Critic and Lecturer