Avraham Jan Menses, member of the Royal Canadian Academy, was born 1933 in Rotterdam, Netherlands; he descends from a Marrano family that established a shipbuilding industry in Northern Holland in the sixteenth century.  The horrors of the Nazi occupation he witnessed as a child embedded a sensitivity in his imagination that is evidenced in the painful moral and spiritual issues explored in his art.  After studying etching and lithography at the Rotterdam Art Academy, he served as a Royal Dutch Air Force officer.  After military service, he traveled extensively through Europe and then made his way to Morocco.  There the deep, mystical spirituality of the Jewish community evoked an inner resonance that led to his conversion to Torah-observant Judaism and his marriage to Rachel Kadoch, daughter of the late kabbalist Rabbi Solomon Kadoch.  Abandoning his early colorful, expressionistic style (influenced by the postwar, Northern European Cobra group), Menses embarked on a progression of major cycles of Judaic and kabbalistic inspired work that required the stark and striking cinematographic delineation of black and white.  His years in Morocco witness the early phase of his Judaic art.  In 1960 Avraham and Rachel settled in Montreal where they established their family.  From 1961 to 1962 he executed his first thematic series Diabolica.  From 1963 to 1980 he simultaneously worked on the Kaddish and klippoth series.  In 1978 he commenced his magnum opus Tikkun series, inspired by the theme of messianic redemption and dedicated to the Lubavitcher Rebbe from whom he received personal blessings.  Menses is exhibited in over eighty major art institutions and museums throughout the world, including the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim in New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the Stedetijk and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Boysmans-Van Beuningen Museum in his native Rotterdam.  He has received numerous awards, honorary degrees, and fellowships.  Avraham and Rachel Menses currently divide their time between Jerusalem and Tsfat where he continues working on his Tikkun series.

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts