Omri Amrany

Omri Amrany (born 23 May 1954) is an Israeli-American best known as a sculptor and painter, though also accomplished as an architectural innovator and wall tapestry artist. Self-taught, he taps into such movements as surrealism for inspiration but eludes being categorized, inventing his own terminology and varying his style. Philosophically a humanist, he gravitates to the human figure as his subject matter, once saying that he uses the figure as an alphabet in order to express his philosophy in a sentence. He is co-founder of the Fine Art Studio of Rotblatt-Amrany in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, a studio that brings to the United States the aims and traditions of the ateliers of Europe, as well as The Julia Foundation, a not-for-profit arts organization.

More than 1,000 drawings, paintings, sculptures, wall tapestries, architectural designs, ceramics, murals, and installations, including Battle of the Amaleks (painting), Revealing, Quest for Freedom, and Against the Wind (sculptures); The Spirit: Michael Jordan (heroic sculpture); The Fusion (multi-sculpture installation for Gary, Indiana); Veterans Memorial Park (9-acre site in Munster, Indiana)

Born in the Scottish Monastery Hospital in Tiberias, Israel, and raised in Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov in the Jordan Valley, Omri Amrany is the son of a Yemenite father and Russian mother, both Jewish immigrants during the post-World War Iera. From his father he learned wood sculpting and ceramics. His mother was a clothes designer who influenced his sense of design. With art running in his genes, Amrany grew up sketching and painting as part of everyday life. During the Yom Kippur war, Amrany served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and saw a number of his buddies killed. His war experiences left him cynical about politics and the military, and a would-be pacifist. They also ignited a passion to define his values and integrate them into his life, his art, and his society. Reentering life, he dealt with post-combat stress by giving free rein to his subconscious whenever he had a pencil and paper at hand. He developed a minimalist style, creating hundreds of drawings completed in seconds and often composed of one unbroken line. In the late 1970s, influenced by his grandmother and aunt, he began to weave wall tapestries. He also began to paint on canvas in a storytelling style he labeled "tribal surrealism" - most notably in Battle of the Amaleks. This work, reminiscent of Picasso’s Guernica in its ambition and intent, was Amrany’s protest against the war in Lebanon. He humanized a landscape of Vadi Tzealim by integrating figures into the hills, stones, and acacia trees, and told a story graphically through tanks and dead soldiers below the looming face of Moses.

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