Artist Spotlight - Yohanan Delaunay-Israel

Biography

C.v. | J/Y Delaunay-Israel | Jerusalem
Born 09/ 22 /1955 in Bressuire (Deux - Sèvres) FRANCE
Lives and works in  Jérusalem ISRAEL

Sans titre 1977 Acrylique on canvas 110 /110 cm

STUDIES

1974-1976 Institute of Visual Arts - Orléans
1976-1979 National School of Fine Arts- Villa ARSON – Nice
1980-1983 School of psychiatric Nurse – G Daumezon Hospital – Fleury les Aubrais
1990 School of Health Executives – St Anne Hospital –Paris
1999 EHESP School of Public Health – Rennes
1991 Scholarship from the Head Office for Cultural Affairs in Région Centre
2015 Aid to olim artists : mention « particularly excellent » Ministry of Allya and Intégration
2023 Art Maters 2023 Top9 Galerie Biesenbach Cologne Germany

Composition 12 1986 Acrylique on canvas 210/210 cm

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2024 - « 5784 » Delaunay-Israël Studio Kfar Etzion
2023 - "Ici et maintenant" Delaunay-Israël Studio Kfar Etzion
2021 - " Lishma " Oeuvres sur papier 2018/2021 Delaunay-Israël Studio Kfar Etzion
2019 - "Epiphanies hiérosolymitaines" Delaunay-Israël Studio Kfar Etsion
2017 - « News from past year » Delaunay-Israel Studio JERUSALEM
2016 - « Open doors » Delaunay-Israël Studio - JERUSALEM
2011 - « Le Pays Où le Ciel est Toujours Bleu » Gallery – ORLEANS
https://flic.kr/s/aHsjvkC6WT ; http://www.poctb.fr/spip.php?article129
2006 - "Works on paper " Municipal Gallery - JERUSALEM
1998 - « Les Temps Modernes » Gallery - ORLEANS
1997 - « Le Carré » Gallery - LILLE
1997 - Louis Joseph Soulas School - Bazoches les Gallerandes (Loiret)
1996 - Contemporary Art Center - Carré Saint- Vincent – ORLEANS
1995 - Maurice Genevoix House - Saint Denis de l ‘Hôtel (Loiret)
1992 - Gallery Louis Guilloux School - ORLEANS
1989 - Contemporary Art Center - Carré Saint- Vincent ORLEANS
1988 - Gallery L’ Aire du Verseau Paris

Prémices Diptyque N° 20 1990 Acryl charcoal on canvas 100/200 cm

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2026 - "Renaissance: Reimagining the Classics" Curator Anatoly Baratynsky Cultural center Jerusalem
2022 - "Nature and landscape in Israeli contemporary Art" Curator: Dr Avivit Agam Dali Phd Ramat-Gan
2021 - "Aliénation " Virtual exhibition Curator : Dr Avivit Agam Dali PhD
2020 - "Absract" Virtual exhibition Curator: Dr Avivit Agam Dali PhD
2017 - « Simples means to plenty : Drawings » Miklat leoumanout -JERUSALEM
2016 - « New wave / New view » Harmony hall, the Cultures’center - JERUSALEM
- Menahem Begin Center JERUSALEM ;
- Ephrat Gallery – TEL-AVIV ;
- Cultural Center – RICHON LE TSION
2007- « Berechit » Musée Hechal Shlomo JERUSALEM
2002 - « Dialogues » : Delaunay/Mazuy. - VIERZON
2001 - « Etats d’Arts/ Etats d’Âmes » Espace Malraux JOUE LES TOURS
2000 - "Sketchbooks" Michel Ronfard School - OLIVET;
- « Le pays où le ciel est toujours bleu » Ipso Facto Gallery - NANTES
1995 - « Sketchbooks » Contemporary Art Center – Carré St Vincent – ORLEANS
1987 - Salon Grands et Jeunes d ‘Aujourd’hui - PARIS ;
- Salon de Montrouge - MONTROUGE ;
– Salon Révélation - PARIS
1986 - Salon Grands et Jeunes d ‘Aujourd’hui - PARIS

Desseins 6 1993 Ink charcoal on Arches paper 100/200 cm

MONOGRAPHS AND EXHIBITIONS CATALOGS

2011 – « Away from dust / Loin de la poussière » Text by Jean Delaunay (Exhibition booklet P.O.C.T.B.)
2003 - « S.Turpin, J. Delaunay et L. Mazuy, S. Bordarier et C. Cuzin » Text by Tristan Trémeau (Art-Press N°287
2002 - « Dialogues » Text by Tristan Trémeau (Exhibition booklet, Vierzon
1998 - « Tant et Temps » Art Sérigraphs Text by Jean Dominique Burtin (Booklet of Edition Dubois Imageries)
1996 - « Paint with reserve /Peindre avec réserve » Text Tristan Trémeau (Exhibition catalog, C.A.C. Orléans)
1989 - « The laying time/La pose du temps » Text by Christian Bonnefoi (Exhibition catalog, C.A.C. Orléans)
1983 - « 146 Créateurs of E.N.A.D. 72.83 » - International School of Fine Arts- Villa Arson - Nice

Curva 18/28 1996 Ink charcoal on Arches paper 108/108 cm

PERSONAL WRITINGS

2013 - « André Robillard, hunter of dreams or portrait of the artist in search of others » in « André Robillard and Art Brut» (Exhibition catalog ISBN 978—2-910173-43-2) Musée des Beaux Arts d’Orléans/CHD G. Daumezon
2012 -« Art Brut in the city : a public tribute from the hospital to André Robillard artworks » in « Trait d’ union » CHD G. Daumezon
2011 – « Silent présence or the paths of drawing » in « Toi et Vous » (Exhibition booklet) FRAC CENTRE/CHD G DAUMEZON http://www.chdaumezon45.fr/CH_FLEURY_INTERNET/Ressources/file/2011-LivretSophieDubosc.pdf
2010 - « The bounderies as patterns » in « Ai Kitahara " (Exhibition booklet) FRAC CENTRE/CHD DAUMEZON
2008 - « An artist residency in the psychiatric hospital » in « 47°54’13.62’’N 1°53’47.19’’E DN » (Exhibition booklet) FRAC CENTRE/CHD G DAUMEZON
2000 – « Biases / Partis pris » in « peintures » (Exhibition booklet) - the country where the sky is always blue– http://poctb.fr
1991 – « The painting way – notes on a thérapeutic itinerary » School health executives, ST ANNE Mental Health Hospital PARIS
1989 – « Notes » (Exhibition booklet) C.A.C. Orléans
1983 – « About two experiences in a painter studio at the psychiatric hospital » Psychiatric and mental health nursing school G. Daumezon Mental Health Hospital - Fleury les Aubrais – France

Island Island 4/31 2009/2013 Acryl on canvas 130/195 cm

SPECIALS PROJECTS AND OTHER ACTIVITIES

2000 – 2015 : Cultural Manager at G. Daumezon Mental Health Hospital Fleury les Aubrais France
Ø Programming cultural and artistic activities inside and outside the hospital
http://beauxartsnantes.fr/colloque-art-psychiatrie-1
Ø Créating an artist residency of art and architecture in partnership with F.R.A.C. Centre : Invited Artists : Laetitia Delafontaine/Gregory Niel, Ai Kitahara, Sophie Dubosq, Sarah Fauguet/David Cousinard, Anne Le-Mee
http://www.frac-centre.fr/expositions/dans-les-murs/ceci-etait-ceci-etait-pas-598.html
https://rcoblog.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/anne-le-mee-jean-delaunay/
Ø Initiator of the monumental sculpture from André Robillard
http://www.chd-art-production.fr/blog/4153/
https://www.google.fr/url
1999 - 2003 : Co-founder of the artists collective « The country where the sky is always blue » in Orléans http://www.poctb.fr
Ø Création of « the Borne / La Borne » for itinerant exhibitions of contemporary art and artistic exchanges with other artists groups.
1983 – 1989 : Animator of artistic workshops (Paintings, , Photo, Theatre) G. Daumezon Mental Health Hospital Fleury les Aubrais France

Patrimoine 3 2004 Acryl on canvas 95/148 cm

Artist Statement

Born in France in 1955, I have been living and working in Jerusalem since 2015. I began painting with a friend in an evening class at secondary school. He liked drawing; I liked painting. We entered the Institut d’Art Visuels in Orléans together (1975–76), after which I was admitted to the Art Department of the Villa Arson — the National School of Fine Arts in Nice (1976–79).
After graduating, I trained as a house painter and then studied to become a psychiatric nurse (1980–83). I was already somewhat familiar with the hospital and its patients, having worked there every summer as an orderly during my Fine Arts studies. After becoming a psychiatric nurse and later a senior healthcare manager at the EPSM Georges Daumezon in the Loiret, I reconciled painting and psychiatry almost on a daily basis. Along with fatherhood and Judaism, they were my only true sources of sustenance.

Les bijoux 6/18 2004/2016 Acryl pastel on canvas 60/120 cm

In Orléans and in Nice, I discovered the beginnings of abstraction, Support Surface, American painting, but also Paleolithic art - the birth of art according to Georges Bataille - the Quattrocento and Chinese painting. We were expected to know everything about the works that preceded us, and particularly those of the 20th century. In a way, we had to answer for our own work in their presence. All the paths of contemporary art were open to us. Somewhat against the current, I chose the path of painting rather than that of Marcel Duchamp. At the beginning of my nursing studies, I also met André Robillard. He lived in the hospital, he drew, assembled, piled up, and collected in what served both as his home and his studio. I was discovering art brut of the "ordinary men at work," according to Jean Dubuffet, but also the expressions of madness, as discussed by Dr. Jean Oury and Henri Maldiney. This was true both in the works of patients, often without a future - poems, drawings, confidences, words from the deepest part of oneself - and in the writings of Antonin Artaud.

Epiphanies hiérosolymitaines 3 2018 Acryl on canvas 210/210 cm

In 1984, after a detour through landscape, still life, and self-portrait, I returned to painting where I had “left off.” That is, at the heart of a geometric composition in a diamond shape created in Nice in 1977. I returned to my practice: working flat, with lines of composition extending beyond the format of the canvas, while moving away from the expressionism and immediacy of the early years, using slow gestures and transparent, liquid colors.
I began working based on principles of composition drawn from art history and geometry (circular symmetry, Borromean knots, harmonic progression of the square, geometric construction of the Golden Ratio, and later, harmonic decomposition of the square, rectangle, and growth spiral of Matila Ghyka).

Lishma 1 2018 Watercolor graphite on Arches paper 73/81 cm

Everything starts randomly, like a sort of throw of the dice: placing geometric shapes on the stretched canvas or paper based on the principle of composition. Each shape carries within it the design of the six or seven others that compose it: lines and forms emerge from this intersection, which itself generates many more to come. Gestures, color fields, and lines, whether white, black, or colored, attach in turn to these generative forms in the unpredictability of a “free association” process.

ריקודים 1/28 Dances 2016 Acryl charcoal on canvas 95/145 cm

Each element has its own life; it is first drawn or painted “in white,” in order to imagine and sense when, where, and how it might be placed in the painting. I paint them while obscuring what surrounds them and later discover the results of their juxtaposition.
The application of layers itself unfolds in the thickness of time, and the transparency allows the different strata of the painting’s emergence to be perceived. Without sketches or preliminary plans, I generally work on several paintings at the same time, sometimes up to five or six.
The more there are, the easier it is to forget them and then rediscover them with surprise. In each session, I intervene at least once, without regret, on a part of each painting. Only in this way am I able to appropriate their emergence.

Fugue 3/24 to Richard Deacon 2021 oil charcoal on canvas 85/115 cm

In 1989, in the paragraph entitled Epiphanies taken from the “Notes” compiled to present the exhibition of works from the Compositions series, I wrote: “The fascination exerted on me by the subtle changes produced by the application of one layer over the canvas was undoubtedly the driving force behind this ‘repetitive’ practice. The abandonment of repetition occurred when, along the way, I discovered that its justification was not in the goal I had initially assigned it (producing unique colors) but rather in the possibility of being able to paint with and on what fascinated me.” At heart, this is still true today. I remain fascinated by the unfolding emergence of the painting: the first moments of the work, the unexpected appearances of its forms, the progressive rise of its intensity. I try to paint in such a way that each viewer can perceive this path as clearly as the landscape on which it opens.

נגד הרוח 3/31 Contre le vent 2024 oil pastel on canvas 169/169 cm

P.S.: My works have been exhibited in France and Israel and are featured on several contemporary art and gallery websites. Two catalogues published by the Centre d’Art Contemporain of the Scène Nationale d’Orléans have been dedicated to me, with texts by the painter Christian Bonnefoi, La pose du temps, and the art historian Tristan Trémeau, Peindre avec réserve. I have personally written several texts about my work, as well as about the art workshops and cultural projects I have led in the hospital.

7 october 5784 Tribute to the victims 2024 oil on canvas Triptych 210/630 cm

As co-founder of the artist collective Le Pays Où le Ciel est Toujours Bleu, I was also, from 2000 to 2015, responsible for cultural projects at E.P.S.M. Georges Daumezon, including the creation of an artist residency Art et Architecture in partnership with the Frac Centre, as well as the realization of a monumental rifle with André Robillard as part of the centenary of the institution.

Jerusalem, November 7, 2025

https://www.delaunay-israel.com
https://www.adagp.fr
https://www.facebook.com/JeanYohanan.DelaunayIsrael
https://www.instagram.com/jeanyohanandelaunay/
https://www.saatchiart.com/jydelaunayisrael
yohanan-delaunay-isra%C3%ABl-19057
https://www.artsper.com/lu/artistes-contemporains/israel/11107/j-y-delaunay-israel
https://fr.artprice.com/artiste/688527/jean-yohanan-delaunay
https://aatonau.com/yohanan-delaunay-israel-the-confluence-of-art-and-healing/

En lisant Akhmatova DHC 1/29 2025 Watercolor pastel on Arches paper 108/158 cm