In the last year’s Jerusalem Day, as part of the tolerance events in the city, artists Natalia Zourabova, Anna Lukashevsky, and Olga Kundina (members of The New Barbizon Group) painted portraits of women in the public space. This event, which took place at Train Track Park (Park HaMesila), offered thoughts about the city’s future in a way that can include all residents without separation of religion, race or gender and can represent women in the public space. 

This action is related to the ideology of the group that continues the tradition of plein air painting that characterized the nineteenth-century French Barbizon School and the idea of painting from direct observation. Throughout the past year, members of The New Barbizon Group paint women in the public space as part of a series of events titled: The New Barbizon Paints Women. These events are curated by Avi Lubin as part of a collaboration with The Goethe Institut in Israel and their ongoing project Don’t Tell Me How To Be A Woman. This project was born during COVID-19 quarantines when violence against women raised around the world and a heated discussion developed in the Western world around the question: Where do women are most vulnerable in times of crisis? In the job market, the healthcare system or through the division of household roles. 

Throughout the Opening Event the artists will invite women to sit for a live portrait painting session. The paintings will be mounted in real time on the wall of the Art Cube Artists’ Studios in Jerusalem, alongside portraits of women that participated in the tolerance event and portraits of women from past events elsewhere in Israel. Meanwhile , the portraits will also be shown in the public space, on a billboard at The Train Track Park (Park HaMesila) placed at the corner of HaParsa Street. The billboard’s location is named  after a sculpture made by the artist Pearl Schneider, Reality Sampling.

The New Barbizon Group, painting women’s portraits in the public space, a joint event by the Art Cube Artists’ Studios and the Goethe-Institut. Photo by Hanani Horovitz and Goethe-Institut