Gilt and Gem-Set Pendant, Igael Tumarkin

Lot Details & Additional Photographs

The nugget style pendant, set with cabochon cut and faceted rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, completed with a double bail, signed, XRF testing gilt metal alloy.

4.5 x 2.75 in.

Igael Tumarkin (1933–2021) was an Israeli sculptor born in Dresden as Peter Martin Gregor Heinrich Hellberg to Bertha Gurevitz and Martin Hellberg; he immigrated to Israel in 1935 and later adopted the Tumarkin surname. He studied with Rudi Lehmann in Ein Hod (1954), worked at Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble as assistant to Karl von Appen (1955–57), and lived in West Germany, the Netherlands, and France in the late 1950s, where Dada, pop art, French avant-garde, and Julio González’s metalwork informed his assemblage practice. Returning to Israel in 1960, he traveled to Japan and the United States in 1962 to study Japanese painting, produced anti-war assemblages in the 1960s, and from the 1970s incorporated art-historical quotations with Palestinian and Bedouin motifs. He worked across sculpture, print, painting, and photography, and installed public monuments including Peace Memorial (Jerusalem, 1966), War and Peace (Ramat Gan, 1969–71), Bik’ah Monument (Jordan Valley, 1972), and Holocaust Monument (Tel Aviv, 1975). Major honors include the Sandberg Prize (1968), Dizengoff Prize (1985), and August Rodin Prize (1992).

Loss to plating; some gemstones with surface-reaching fractures and chips visible under 10x magnification.