VII. Basic Colors (1966-1972)
Yona Fischer, Catalogue: "Itineraries and Forms", 1976
1971 Recipient of the Israel Prize in painting. Retires from service in the Foreign Ministry.
1972 Solo exhibition at the Dvora Schocken Gallery, Tel Aviv, where he shows 24 works, among them the series Exercise on the Line of 8 and Ornament and Profile.
Aroch's quest for basic forms runs parallel to his work with basic colors--blue and red. Both elements display a similar process of paring down. In the work, which focuses mainly on the arrangement of material forms on the surface, basic colors play a special role, though open to various context-dependent meanings: an abstract structure, a story, a situation.
"It's easiest to explain basic forms through basic colors. Each basic color has a basic form. This is a topic. In the show at Dvora Schocken's Gallery I wanted to examine whether the acquired freedom brought forth also new elements. The weakness of the thesis is that blue and red are basic colors; they recur in our mind. In flags. Here's a basic element one can build on, play with. The Cubists created basic forms and exhausted them rather fast: square, circle, triangle--their quantity is limited.
When you're dealing with form and color without distinguishing between them you're running the risk of becoming confused. I explicitly wanted to prove that when blue and red are together they turn into a basic element, regardless of how you paint them."
