Flora Palaestina
Nurit Gur-Lavy (Karni)
2016
The book Flora Palaestina by artist Nurit Gur Lavy (Karni) encompasses a selection of her art devoted to painting the flowers and plants of the Land of Israel. In botanical terminology "flora" denotes the entire plant life occurring in a particular place (region, country, etc.) or an extensive scientific publication that classifies plants. Flora Palaestina, then, refers to the plant life in the Land of Israel. But the book before us is by no means a botanical scientific publication, for this treasury of flowers does not depict the flowers' structure, their families, habitats, dispersion, or seasons. In contrast with a practical plant finder, in this compilation of paintings the squill does not stand for all squills, the anemone does not represent all anemones, nor does the bellflower all bellflowers. Here each flower attests only to itself, for in each and every one of them carries the imprint of the personal story, the history of the place, the social issues, the pulse of current events, and the human experience – as these are embodied in botany in the artist's work.
---Ron Bartos
- Design: Tali Liberman
- Editing: Gal Kusturica
- Texts: Ron Bartos, Maya Bejerano
- Translation: Maya Shimony , poem: Tsipi Keller
- Copies: 1600
- Pages: 182
- Type of binding: hardcover
- Dimensions (cm): 25X19
- Reproductions: Sasha Dubinsky
- Printing: A.R. Printing LTD
- Binding: A.R. Printing LTD
- Type of printing: Offset
- Publication: Brosh TLV
- Place of publication: Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel
- ISBN: 9789659189168
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Nurit Gur Lavy (Karni) was born in 1952, lives and works in Kfar Yona. Studied at the Israel Hershberg School in Jerusalem (2000). Graduated from HaMidrasha School of Art in Ramat HaSharon (1984). Holds a Bachelor's Degree in special education and history from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (1975). In recent years, she engages with political-geographic and socio-historical mapping of the landscape, manifested in images taken from the worlds of local botany and cartography. Her works have a diary like biographical nature, as she visually and critically examines her changing environment. She paints in different artistic languages that range from the figurative to the abstract and with diverse materials that include classic materials like oil on canvas and alternative materials like markers on pieces of wood veneer, pigment on used ceramic plates and more. She exhibited solo exhibitions and in group exhibitions in museums and galleries in Israel and worldwide. Her works are included in the collections of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Ein Harod Museum, Library of Congress, Washington, Yona Fisher collection at the Ashdod Museum of Art and in private Israeli and international collections.
