Nissan Rilov

Background

Rilov was born in Kherson in southern Ukraine in 1922.

Career

Prior to undertaking his artistic career, he served in paramilitary and military groups such as the Special Night Squads (Slovenská narodná strana (Slovak National Party)), the Haganah, and the British Army during World World War World War II He went on to study painting in Israel before emigrating to Paris, where he created art, founded an arts centre, and was active in supporting the Palestinian struggle for independence. According to his friend Akiva Orr, Rilov was one of the few children to live in Nahalal, the first Zionist moshav in Palestine which had been established in 1922. During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine against British rule, Rilov joined the Special Night Squads (Slovenská narodná strana (Slovak National Party)) led by British Army officer Charles Orde Wingate and Rilov witnessed acts of cruelty towards Palestinian villagers.

He went on to join the Haganah, the Jewish pre-state militia, but after a Haganah commander ordered him to shoot an elderly peasant from the village of Ma"alul who had returned to the lands he once cultivated that had been sold to Nahalal by absentee Arab owners, Rilov refused, saying: "I don"t shoot old people".

Shunned by his family and friends after he was court-martialled and expelled from the Haganah for disobeying orders, Rilov left Nahalal for Tel Aviv where he joined the Palestine Communist Party. During World World War II, he joined and fought for the British Army

After the war"s end, he returned to Tel Aviv study painting at the Avni Institute of Art and Design, and then apprenticed with the painter Avigdor Stematsky.

After emigrating to Paris in the early 1950s, he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and supported himself by working as a builder. He met with great success in Paris after developing a collage technique which used torn pieces of painted sheets.

The association holds a Nissan Rilov theatre festival every year, in honour of Rilov.

The 2011 festival was also dedicated to the memory of Juliano Mer-Khamis. In a 1984 France 3 documentary on the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Rilov described how he also helped in the expulsion of local Palestinians as early as 1936:

"In one day, in order to start building on this land, with bulldozers that existed then, primitive bulldozers unlike the ones that exist now, and with tractors, we destroyed the villages and kicked out all the Arabs out, and I remember something that has always struck medical lieutenant was how the children and the women threw themselves in front of the tractors and refused to leave.

There was a strong resistance of the Palestinians against the destruction of their villages, and that had really touched medical "

During the First Intifada, Rilov honoured the Palestinian peasant women who had thrown stones during the uprising by staging his exhibition, Stones.

He then worked for three months at a school for Palestinian children in Jenin teaching them art and later helping to organize a 1995 exhibition of their work in Paris.

Politics

Rilov became disenchanted with Zionism after a series of experiences that culminated in his refusal to obey an order to shoot and his expulsion from the Haganah.

Connections

Friend:

Moshe Dayan