(b Dresden, 1933). Israeli sculptor, draughtsman and stage designer of German birth. His family left Germany in 1935 to settle in Palestine and there he studied at the Technical School of Tel Aviv until 1949. After serving in the Israeli army he returned to Germany in 1953 to design sets for Bertolt Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble and in 1956 he produced sets for Brecht’s Der gute Mensch von Sezuan. In 1957 he designed theatre sets in the Netherlands, Germany and Israel, by which time he was sculpting in iron, creating works such as Chariot (1956; see 1980 exh. cat.). He had his first one-man show in 1956 at the Santee Landwer Gallery in Amsterdam. In the 1960s he largely used bronze and iron to make his sculptures and assemblages, often incorporating weapon parts into them, as in Aggression (1964; see 1967 exh. cat., pl. 55). Other works of this period are similarly disturbing, such as Agnus Dei (1967–8; Jerusalem, Israel Mus.), which has screaming heads incorporated into a crucifixion format. At the end of 1969 Tumarkin began using polyhedrons made from stainless steel in his sculptures, as in his public work Homage to Dürer (1969; Haifa).

• Tumarkin, Ygael
  • Israel, §III: Painting, graphic arts and sculpture