The Book Of The Very First Memory

Meir Agassi (1947 – February 1998) was a writer, painter, translator, journalist and art critic. In the years 1963-1965 he studied art at the Avni Institute. In 1970 he presented "Drawings" at the "Bar-Kochva" gallery in Tel Aviv. In 1980 he won a scholarship to study in England. In 1982 he settled in Bristol, UK. His first book "The Black Hills of Dakota", sad and bitter memories of a kibbutz native, was printed in 1987. His book of poems "Clouds Sculpted Shapes" was printed in 1969. He was the deputy editor of the Israeli monthly Magazine Monitin, where he worked alongside Adam Baruch and Rino Zror. He also wrote several hymns, and many critical articles on art in the magazine "Studio" and the newspaper "News". In 1988 he wrote an entire issue of the magazine Studio under the title "Hotel Utopia-Dystopia" on the subject of "outsider" artists. In February 1998 Agassi was killed in a car accident on the road between Bristol and Oxford. His wife, Tessa, and their son Daniel were killed with him. After his death, many paintings and drawings as well as many diaries were discovered in his estate. All of these were presented in a comprehensive exhibition in 2002, which was shown in several places in Israel and was donated to the Haim Atar Art Center in Ein-Harod. A large exhibition in his memory was curated by Yaniv Shapira at the Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod, and parts of it, including Agassi's work area, are permanently displayed in the Mishkan's library. The exhibition 'Window to a Dream about Beauty' opened on March 2024, displaying a chronological survey of the chapters in Agassi’s oeuvre, from the mid-1970s to his announcement of the Meir Agassi Museum in 1992.