Ofer Lellouche creates from a place of deep passion. Stepping into the studio reveals dozens of portraits and sculptures in moody shades of grey and black. The concrete walls are lined with countless paintings of varying sizes. To the left, a small kitchenette; and nearby, photos of Lellouche’s children as babies are pinned to the wall. As we exchange a few opening pleasantries, he leads me to the armchair in the center of the studio—a chair facing a mirror through which he paints his self-portrait every morning.
Lellouche paints, sculpts, draws, and photographs—depending on when you catch him. He travels frequently. Soon, he’ll be heading to China to sculpt a four-meter-tall self-portrait that will be exhibited at one of Shanghai’s major museums. At the same time, he’s preparing for a show in December at a gallery in Switzerland, and he’s also working on illustrations for a poem by the French symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé, recently translated into Hebrew. The illustrated book will feature the poem in both French and Hebrew, accompanied by Lellouche’s artworks (Translation: Liora Bring Hadeker, Published by “Olam Hadash”).
Lellouche keeps studios in Paris, Beijing, and Israel. He worked for years in Italy, exhibited at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, taught at an academy in China, and fifteen years ago turned down an offer from a prestigious Swiss gallery because it required him to relocate. “To create,” he says, “I need to be close to Tel Aviv—the sea, the cosmopolitan energy. Even though I grew up abroad, this is home.”
Photograph by Avi Chai
Did They Part Ways—or Just Meet?
For two hours—maybe more—we drifted through a conversation about life and art. We spoke of dreams, friendship, family, and love. We wondered aloud what it means to be an Israeli artist, what the word “honor” really signifies, what it feels like to live by the sea in Jaffa, and what sadness might look like.
Every now and then, Lellouche rose from his seat and led me into the adjacent room, where hundreds of his works are stored. He would pull out a landscape painting that reminded him of a story from another time. On one occasion, he guided me to the front of the studio, where a rust-colored metal sculpture stood. “Do you think these are two figures embracing just before they part,” he asked, “or ones that have just now met?”
“They’ve just met,” I replied, though I had no real way of knowing. I simply prefer meetings over farewells. And it seems Lellouche does too.
He spent his early childhood in Tunisia, where he was born, and describes it as surprisingly similar to a Tel Aviv childhood—soccer, sea, and paddleball. But, he says, he stopped being a child rather quickly. “When I was 13, the Jews were expelled from Tunisia. I took my younger brother—he was 11—by ship to Marseille. We spent a night at a portside hotel, and the next day we were sent to a boarding school in France. That’s when my childhood ended.”
Was art part of your childhood landscape?
“I started drawing very young. All my school notebooks were full of sketches. My grandfather collected paintings—mostly from the 19th century—so I absorbed a lot of that. But I never thought of art as something serious, and I went into the sciences. While living in France, I enrolled in university to study mathematics and physics. But when I moved to Israel at 19, something shifted.”
Here, his words taper off. He pauses, furrows his brow, and then continues—more slowly, in a softer voice:
“During my military service, during the War of Attrition in 1968, I went through a crisis. I contracted a severe case of infectious hepatitis. I was sent to a convalescent home, completely overwhelmed by uncertainty. I didn’t have the strength to do anything—except draw. That’s when I realized this could be a real path. Slowly, art pulled me in.”
Photograph by Avi Chai
Not Afraid to Grow Older
Lellouche (68) followed his calling in art all the way back to Paris. He traveled there in 1971 to study, returning to Israel in 1975. Even then, he didn’t believe he could make a living from painting. And in truth, until the age of 40, he delivered flyers door to door, worked as a bartender, and built film sets just to make ends meet.
“At 30, I was already a well-known painter in Israel—I had been accepted to the Gordon Gallery, the most prestigious in the city at the time—but I sold almost nothing.” He even refers to his first solo exhibition as “a complete flop.”
“I was so excited for that show—and I didn’t sell a thing. I couldn’t even afford a hotel, so after a glamorous, high-profile opening night, I ended up sleeping in a scout’s tent.”
But all that is in the past. Since then, Lellouche has exhibited in Madrid—alongside works by Picasso—and has sold pieces for significant sums. These days, he’s entirely optimistic:
“The future is still ahead of me. I’m not afraid of growing older. I’ve worked very hard all my life, explored many different directions, and now, suddenly, it all feels easier. This is my harvest season. Things feel more accurate, more focused, more effortless.”
Do you remember your first artwork?
“It was awful. Honestly, up until the age of 28 I made pretty bad stuff—very weak portraits, most of which I destroyed. When I came back to Israel after my studies in Paris, I spent two years working daily in the studio and finally found my voice. I created a lot of work and hung it all on the walls. It was a kind of Darwinian process—some pieces survived and held up, others I threw away.
Today, I still paint landscapes, though they don’t yet match the level of my sculptures. Who knows—maybe in five years I’ll create a series of colorful landscapes that’ll hold their own beside them.”
Photograph by Avi Chai
Considered a Lone Wolf
It takes only a brief walk through Lellouche’s studio to recognize that the portrait is his central motif. “I came into art as a mature artist, at a time when people were declaring painting dead. That was the dawn of conceptual art, and the kind of work I was doing was seen as passé. I had to sharpen my voice just to survive the flood of visual imagery around me—and the human head struck me as one of our most vital, essential forms. Universal, infinite, timeless. So I went deeper into it.”
When I ask Lellouche whether he feels artists in Israel receive the respect they deserve, he waves the question off entirely:
It doesn’t matter. An artist doesn’t do what he does for respect. A true artist creates because he has no choice—because if he doesn’t, he’ll get sick. Maybe even die. Some artists chase respect, but I find that pathetic. If people love my work, that’s wonderful—but that’s love, not respect.
There are collectors who want an Ofer Lellouche piece just for the name, and that disgusts me. And then there are modest collectors, without much means, who buy a piece in 30 post-dated checks—and that moves me more than anything.
An Israeli Artist Abroad—A Lone Wolf at Home
Though Lellouche is every bit the international artist, abroad he’s consistently presented as Israeli—someone whose work reflects the anxieties of his homeland, a mirror of how the world sees Israel. But within Israel, it’s more complicated. Often, when exhibitions feature prominent Israeli artists, his name is absent.
Photograph by Tali Machlev
“I’m a serious painter—what I do is heavy. It’s not something everyone can connect to. I’ve had exhibitions abroad that were considered great successes, yet within the Israeli art scene, I’m seen as a lone wolf.”
Would you like to be more closely associated with Israeli art?
“I just want to be me. And I’m at peace with who I am.”
What’s the greatest compliment you’ve ever received?
“When two highly respected art critics wrote completely opposite things about the same piece. One called it ‘a hymn to life,’ the other, ‘a funeral procession.’ That’s when I knew I’d done something right.”
Are there artists who influence your work?
“Of course. I’m constantly stealing ideas. From great artists, from bad ones—and especially from amateurs. Because they don’t even know they’re geniuses.”
If you weren’t a painter or sculptor?
“I could’ve done many things—but I wouldn’t want to be anything else.”
What are your hobbies?
“I swim, I smoke cigars, and I most enjoy doing it with a friend. Pierre Restany, one of the most important art critics of the 20th century, was a devoted cigar lover. We used to sit together at a café near the Pompidou Center in Paris and smoke. What I love most about cigars is the pace of the conversation—calm, slow, relaxed, full of listening.”
What moves you?
“Love.”
