When Tiroche holds its annual auction on June 28, it will feature Nahum Gutman’s rolling hills of Ein Kerem and Reuven Rubin’s portrait of a young Jerusalemite woman, along with other long-awaited works by leading Israeli artists drawn from several major collections.

“These sales are always exciting,” said Amitai Hazan, CEO of the auction house, “but even more so with these collections that we’ve been working on for years and which are finally here.”

In addition to Gutman and Rubin, the Tiroche auction will feature works by early 20th-century artists Yehezkel Streichman, Mordecai Ardon and Menachem Shemi, alongside contemporary pieces by others such as Michal Rovner, Israel Hershberg, Fatima Abu Rumi and Lea Nikel.

Three of the artworks are valued at NIS 1 million ($300,000) each, a price considered to be on the very high end for Israeli art. These include two by Rubin depicting Jerusalem from the 1920s and 1930s — the period widely regarded as the peak of his artistic career — and a 1972 painting by Ardon.

The paintings come from three collections of Israeli art assembled outside the country, by Joseph and Gerda Brender of Sydney; Rubin and Peggy Zimmerman, who built their collection during the 1960s and 1970s; and Nathan Kaplan, a Zionist activist from Chicago.

“It’s not just which paintings, it’s the quality,” said Hazan. “They are museum-grade collections.”

Other works on auction are expected to sell for several thousand dollars and upward, Hazan said, while the top-estimated pieces reflect a market that’s stronger than expected after suffering as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and almost three years of war with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

“I first heard........

© The Times of Israel