II. Arie Aroch facing New Horizons (1947-1956)

Yona Fischer, Catalogue: "Itineraries and Forms", 1976

1947 "Exhibition of the Seven" at Tel Aviv Museum of Art (with Giladi, Wechsler, Zaritzki, Meyerovich, Nathansohn [Naton] and Streichmann). Aroch shows six oil paintings, among them The Red Bus.

The seven artists constituted the core of the Ofakim Hadashim (New Horizons) group, which was founded in 1948 and first exhibited in 1949 at Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Aroch participated in the group's exhibition in 1949 (The Red Bus), 1952, 1955 (Girls in the Garden), 1956 (On the Terrace), 1963 (Jewish Motif) and 1966.

1948-50 Serves as emissary of the Jewish National Fund to Argentina. Paints Joseph and his Brothers, Portrait of David and Ruthi and landscapes.

1950-53 Serves as First Secretary at the Israel Embassy in Moscow. Paints Woman with Flowers, Sukkah and St. Vassili Church.

1954 Settles in Jerusalem. Paints extensively in his apartment.

1955 Solo exhibition at Tel Aviv Museum of Art and at the Bezalel National Museum in Jerusalem.

Shows 28 oil paintings, among them Moses in Sarajevo, Girls in the city park and paintings from the series Buses in the Galilee Mountains.

Arie Aroch developed, mainly during the years 1954-56, his own painting technique to embody the image in the patch of colour and the scrawled line. The image, which appears as the mark of a personal handwriting, starkly contrasts with the abstract, lyrical, intimate, amorphous conception his friends in Ofakim Hadashim developed. All these artists shared the distance from reality, but in Aroch's work it led to "forms hidden within the artist."

This period exerted a tremendous influence on the works of several younger artists in the early 1960s, among them Aviva Uri and Raffi Lavie.

"Only after I understood that I must preserve inside myself the 'what,' all the interior experiences around the objects I loved, that I must not think about it, that I must surrender to the 'how' of painting, to loving the touch of the brush, to the love of doing, of doodling and small lines, then the appropriate and inherently necessary 'what' will emerge -- only then was I able to make the paintings I had wanted to make but didn't know it."... From "Conversation with Yocheved Weinfeld," Massa, November 1968