Arlene Amaler-Raviv South African, b. 1953
My life has been like travelling up a river. Every now and then I would hear singing around the bend so around the bend I would go and become occupied with living.
Arlene Amaler-Raviv is an experienced painter from South Africa whose works have been exhibited both locally and internationally. Moving several times across many cities and countries, her work is influenced by themes of displacement, transition, and relocation. Amaler-Raviv paints the human condition through her blend of figuration and abstraction, producing emotionally charged paintings that represent larger political themes.
For Amaler-Raviv, everything is ‘terribly important’ and intensely felt. This fragility and passion becomes her strength. She appears in her paintings at many different times, in many different guises.
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Arlene Amaler-Raviv received a BA FineArt Degree from the University of the Witwatersrand where she studied under Robert Hodgins. In the 70’s she was involved in art education, workshops,teaching and teacher training programmes.
From 1979 she has held many solo exhibitions at Everard Read Gallery, Market Theatre Gallery and group shows both in South Africa and abroad. During the 1990’s she lectured at the University of Pretoria, FUBA and at the Katlehong Art Center (BACA). In 1996 she lived in the Netherlands where she assisted in the curatorship of the exhibition of ‘Africa meets Africa’ at the Museum of Ethnology, Rotterdam.
1997 Amaler-Raviv moved to Cape Town where numerous projects developed. A twenty meter sight-specific installation for the District Six Sculpture Project ‘Dislocation Relocation’; large oil paintings on glass ‘Departure’ at Mark Coetzee Fine Art and two collaborative exhibitions with photographer Dale Yudelman – ‘One’ at the Association for Visual Arts and ‘Where the Mountain meets the City’ at 232 Long Street.
In 2000 Vodacom commissioned Amaler-Raviv to create an installation of seventeen oil paintings on aluminium. Spier acquired a 2m x 2m portrait of Mandela for their collection in 2002. Many of her paintings and works hang in private collections around the world and publicly in major art collections in South Africa
