No discussion of the art of Lea Majaro-Mintz can approximate the experience of seeing the work itself, of confronting it, of being challenged by it.

It is also of particular value to view the artwork in its environment. The artist lives in an elaborate multi-level dwelling which encompasses residence, studio, workshop and galleries. The sculptures are an integral part of the life of the household. They sit scattered on the floor, they melt over the stairs, they drape over the television set. Some congregate on the bookshelves. Others occupy armchairs. Still others spill out into the garden, while several, naked and sensuous, bask in the sun on the open rooftop.

The terra-cotta flesh of these figures seems to harmonize organically with the limestone walls and flagstone lanes of the neighborhood, the reconstructed Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. The clay-turned-human and taking the sun with abandon seems an ironic commentary on the cool stone walls which envelop hives of humanity within their shadows. And like the ancient quarter itself, these endless variations on the female form suggest a timeless quality.

Why only women? "Women I can feel from the inside out," says Lea. "With men I have an idealized conception. I can imagine how they *should* sit and how they *should* recline. But with women, I *know* how they sit and how they lie down." The art of Lea Majaro-Mintz has three dimensions. The first is an expression of a many-sided personality with a deeply rooted Israeli background. Born in the Old City of Jerusalem, she is eighth generation in the country. Her professional and cultural development includes study at the Jerusalem Hebrew Gymnasium, the Bezalel Academy of Art, and law school. She also has a wide range of cultural, social and scientific interests. She has taught art at Bezalel and at Bar-Ilan University and at art teachers seminaries, has written art criticism for the daily "Davar" and for art and literary journals, and her book, *Form and Colour*, was published as a text by the Education and Culture Ministry. Fifteen of her wall reliefs adorn public institutions throughout the country. The series of "Reflections," some of which appear here, have been broadcasted. These essays contain some clues to her conceptual approach to sculpture.

The second dimension is seen in the large variety of forms she produces, fully vital forms that flow, fold, and expand organically. Adapting the technique of the ceramist, who forms, paints, and then fires the clay, Majaro-Mintz has found in terra-cotta a suitable medium for her talents. As she molds her material, it seems to respond under her fingers, creating a kind of dialogue between artist and material. The resulting expression is one of remarkable power. The third dimension is in the style. The complexity of Lea's art, abounding on the one hand with imagination and levity, and on the other with reference to the actual and personal, places her squarely in the movement of Post-Modernism. Post-Modernism has just evolved as a new current in art, superseding Modernism, the movement that was striving after simplification, conceptualization and purism. Many artists are now pursuing a new complexity of multi-value art which has reference to the local, the actual and the personal — an art which admittedly conveys a message.

Local elements in the art of Lea Majaro-Mintz are expressed first in the quality of the terra-cotta, which reminds us of the dry climate of the region; then in the imaginative structures which seem inspired by ancient Jewish sarcophagi, and in the convex forms reminiscent of antique oil lamps. The local elements are also expressed in the forms of the earthy, fat women bent with care, sharing every Israeli mother's destiny in a society continually faced by war. Finally, the local element is reflected in the very vitality and intensity of her art, which seems to emanate from a society in the throes of physical, cultural and spiritual renewal.

At the same time a more universal message is involved — a commentary on the human condition of womanhood, of the loneliness of the individual within the crowd, of society's protective frameworks which turn into barriers. The art of Lea Majaro-Mintz is a whole world built of many layers, well executed, rich in imagination, strong in expression, and conceived with aesthetic sensibility and wisdom.

*Noa Paritzky (Aviram)*

Tel Aviv University, Department of Modern Art