Yaacov Agam
 Yaacov Agam was born in 1928, the seventh of nine children, to a Jewish orthodox family. His father was a rabbi as well as a brilliant scholar and author in Jewish philosophy and religion. In 1936, his father refused to send him to the non-religious state school. As a result, he was home schooled. In 1940, he began to paint. Although the family was desperately poor, spiritual teachings of his father have been a constant influence on the work of Agam. He spent 18 months in a British prison in 1945 and when he was released he studied in Zurich. 1953 marked a milestone with his first polyphonic painting. He is considered foremost a kinetic artist.
The Nine Commandments of Agam:
- The fourth dimension, that of time, is to be considered an essential reality of my artworks, as it is in reality. The most consistent thing in reality is change and movement. My art applies this transcendent notion of reality through an image. Reality is in constant change, unexpected, and so is my art...instead of artificially stopping time, I try to express the beauty of change.
- The invisible is at all times more present in my art than the immediately visible.
- The image in my art exists as a possibility in the midst of its becoming, rather than a static petrified look of reality.
- No one can "see" the totality of my image-form, as it may differ in time and from every angle, like reality.
- In my form, I strive to the "complete form." That means to the infinite shape, including all its possible transformations, changes and modifications: past, present, and future. In one word, my form is becoming rather than being, and there is no infinite form other than the complete form which includes all possibilities. It is this characteristic that defines a form to be beyond the visible.
- As opposed to a conventional artwork, where everyone sees the same and everyone sees everything, in my art no two viewers see the same thing at the same time.
- Although my work is represented as a multiplicity of possibilities, it is its unity through diversity which is to be looked for.
- Reality is beyond the visible, and an artwork has to conduct you and introduce you to reality.
- Hands have no brain, and we create with our eyes rather than our hands.
Everyman:
...is...
...has to be...
...may be...
...can be...
...should be...
...must be...
a creator if he knows how to look.
My art is an introduction to the overcoming of visual illiteracy. Often, I feel most of us are visually illiterate.
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