Yaacov Agam is the pioneer of the kinetic movement in art and its most outstanding contemporary representative. Agam fundamentally changed the accepted idea of art as a fixed image. He works with color, form, time and movement which makes his art four-dimensional. „My intention was to create a work of art which would transcend the visible, which cannot be perceived except in stages, with the understanding that it is a partial revelation and the perpetuation of the existing. My aim is to show what can be seen within the limits of possibilty which exists in the midst of coming into being.“, Agam.
Agam is the highest-selling Israeli artist. An outsize kinetic painting done in oil on a wood panel, which was shown at the 1980 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, estimated at $150,000 to $250,000, was sold at Sotheby’s in 2009 for the record-breaking sum of $698,500. His artworks have been displayed in museums around the world, including the Gug- genheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Yaacov Agam was born in 1928 in Rishon LeZion, which was then the British Mandate of Palestine. His father, Yehoshua Gibstein, was a rabbi and a kabbalist. Agam first studied at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem under Mordecai Ardon, who was the initiator of the fundamental courses for the Bauhaus School, and he believed that the foundation of art does not lie in the tradition of drawing but on the perfor- mance of material and textures, as well as studies of patterns and rhythms. His liberal educational approach to art guided Agam to focus on the core spirit of art through a non-repre- sentative approach, which corresponds to Judaism’s focus on the invisibility of the truth.
In the late 1940s Agam moved to Zurich, Switzerland. While attending Zürich’s Kunstgewerbe Schule, Agam studied under the renowned color theorist Johannes Itten who was propagating Bauhaus ideas. In 1951 Agam moved to Paris and studied at the Atelier d’art abstrait and at the Académie de la grande chaumière.
In 1953 he held his first one-man
exhibition at the Galerie Craven in
Paris entitled Peintures en Mouve-
ment, where he showed two series of
early work. In one, grids of painted
strips incorporated different designs
on opposite sides created images
that merged and changed as spec-
tators shifted their viewing position.
After this tribute Agam started his collabo-
ration with the legendary gallery Denise René, Paris.
Denise René was a visionary French art gallerist specializing in kinetic art and op art. She established her career as a gallerist in 1945 by exhibiting in Paris at a time when the German occupation had left the city almost culturally empty. René believed that abstrac- tion could liberate art from the academic constraints of the figurative tradition, exhibiting under the principle that art must invent new paths in order to exist. René was one of the first to welcome interna- tional artists to her gallery at a time when international exchange was uncommon.
Her legendary group exhibition Le Mouvement in 1955 introduced the back then-emerging pioneers of Kinetic and Op art, such as Yaacov Agam, Jean Tinguely, and Pol Bury, and showcased their work alongside already established artists Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, and Vasarely. This exhibition established the Kinetic and Op-art movements internationally and popularized a new generation of artists.
In 1972 Agam was invited by former French President Geroge Pompidou to create a whole room at the Elysée palace in Paris – a room that is now part of the permanent display at the Centre Pompidou. Agam created an environmental Salon where the walls are covered with polymorphic murals of changing images a kinetic ceiling, moving transparent colored doors and a kinetic carpet on which he placed a sculpture.
Further examples of the environmental-scale works of kinetic painting include the facades of buildings such as the The Heart of the Fountain- head in Taipei, Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv, a Miami condominium Villa Regina or the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Those are buildings turned into huge outdoor kinetic sculptures. Their outside walls look different according to the angle at which you face them.
Making art which includes the infinite form and transformation within itself, Agam creates sophisticated sculptures refined in their simplicity that evoke invisible possibilities of a given space. His art work is in permanent dialogue with the world of man and his environment, so that we can better become aware of ourselves and look further into our relation with the world.
The Agam Museum was opened in 2018 in the home town of Yaacov Agam, Rishon Lezion in Israel – a tribute to one of the greatest living artists today. The museum is also a part of Agam’s educational center, which invites people not only to see his body of work but also to stop thinking two-dimensional and start thinking four-dimensional, in other words: to start thinking big.
Agam works were subject of retrospectives at the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1972, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1980. His works are included in the collec- tions of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among others. Yaacov Agam continues to work tirelessly on bringing his philosophy of visual education to the public.
This year Agam celebrated his 94rd Birthday. He is considered to be one of one most outstanding contemporary representative of
the Kinetic Art nowadays. He completely changed the concepts of contemporary art. His achievements have become part of the history of modern art.
You are most welcome to discover the invisible behind the visible. His art is in permanent dialogue with the world of man and his environment, so that we can better become aware of ourselves and look further into our relation with the world.

2021
Presistence of Transformation, Bruno Art Group, Context Art Miami, Miami [USA]
Living images. An exhibition-workshop by Yaacov Agam,
West Bund Museum, Shanghai [CN]
2020
Living images. An exhibition-workshop by Yaacov Agam, Galerie des enfants, Centre Pompidou, Paris [FR]
2018
Yaacov Agam: 51 Steps, An Upward Exhibition, Artrust, Melano [CH] 2017
Yaacov Agam, Yaacov Agam Museum of Art, Rishon LeZion [IL] 2016
Beyond the Invisible, Apeejay Arts, New Delhi [IN]
2014
Bruno Art Group, Art Stage Singapore, Singapore [SG]
2013
The Unexpected – Time in Art, Bruno Art Group, Singapore [SG] Beyond the Invisible, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan [TW]
2012
Interactive computer touch screen research
2011
Construction of the Agam Museum, Rishon LeZion, Israel
Design of 3 new buildings at the Ne ́eman Tower, Tel Aviv [IL]
2010
Design of the façade of the Building for the Shui-Yuan Maket
in Taipei including a polymorph of 14x14 meter on the main façade 2009
Monumental Art Work for the new stadium for world games at Kaohsiung [TW]
2007
Agam initiated a project for a monumental environmental sculp- ture in Las Vegas [USA]
2004
Agam realized the façade design for 3 large KODAK buildings, Prague [CZ]
2003
Agam realized the façade of a group of buildings called Migda- lei Ne’eman, in north Tel Aviv, considered as the greatest inhabit- ed colored sculpture buildings of the world
2002
Memorial for the Holocaust, New Orleans [USA]
2001
Design of the synagogue in New York [USA]
2000
Memorial for the new Jewish Community Centre building
in Buenos Aries [AR]
1997
Fundación Arte y Tecnologia, Madrid [ES]
1996
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aries [AR]
Yaacov Agam received the Amos Comenius Medal from UNESCO for his innovative methods in teaching
1995
Multi Dimensional Art, Philharmonic Center for the Arts
in Naples, Florida [USA]
1989-90
Retrospective exhibition in Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo, in the Daimazu Museum of Osaka and in the Kawasaki City Museum, Kanagawa [JP]
1988
Multi Dimensional Works, Galerie Denis René, Paris [FR]
1987
Kahala Fine Art Gallery, Honolulu, Hawaii [USA]
1986
Fundación Arte y Tecnologia, Madrid [ES]
Los Angeles Art Fair, Los Angeles [USA]
1985
Circle Gallery, San Diego [USA]
Retrospective exhibition, Queen‘s Quay Terminal, Toronto [CA] 1984
Retrospective exhibition, Park West Galleries, Michigan [USA] From the 2nd, to the 3rd into the 4th Dimension, Clayton Art Gallery, st. Louis [USA]
Laurence Ross Galleries, Beverley Hills [USA]
1983
Circle Gallery, Chicago [USA]
1982
Circle Gallery, Pittsburg [USA]
1980
Queensland, Australia [AU]
Liatowitsch Gallery, Basel [CH]
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania, Austrlia [AU]
1979
Kolding Kunstforening, Denmark [DK]
Harcourts Gallery, San Francisco [USA]
1978
J. Richard Gallery, Englewood, New Jersey [USA]
R.E.S Gallery, Antwerp [BE]
Electric Gallery, Toronto [CA]
Nahan Art Gallery, New Orleans [USA]
1977
The Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria [SA]
National Museum of Art, Capetown [SA]
Janus Gallery, Wahington D.C. [USA]
1976
Museum of Modern Art, Birmingham, Alabama [USA]
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City [MX]
1975
Agam Selected Suits, the Jewish Museum, New York [USA]
1974
Hook- Epstein Gallery, Houston [USA]
Video- Art exhibition, Galerie Attali, Paris [FR]
1973
Maison de la Culture, Bourges [FR]
Retrospective exhibition, Musée National d‘Art Moderne, Paris [FR] 1972
Graphic Works, Galerie Denis René, Paris [FR]
1971
Galerie Denis René, Paris [FR]
1966
Marlborough- Gerson Gallery, New York [USA]
1962
Galerie Suzanne Bollage, Zurich [CH]
1959
Darian Gallery, London [GB]
Galerie Suzanne Bollage, Zurich [CH]
1958
Galerie Aujourd‘hui, Paris [FR]
1956
Agam, Soto, abner, Galerie Denis René, Paris [FR]
1953
Galerie Craven, Paris [FR]