David Gerstein

DAVID GERSTEIN  is an Israeli contemporary artist born in Jerusalem in 1944. A painter, sculptor, draftsman and printmaker, he has developed a career spanning more than five decades, creating a distinctive body of work at the intersection of painting and sculpture, characterized by vibrant color, movement and close observation of everyday life.

His artistic education was remarkably international. Gerstein studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem from 1965 to 1966, followed by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris between 1966 and 1968. He later continued his training at the Art Students League in New York and St Martin’s School of Art in London. From 1971 to 1985, he also served as a senior lecturer at Bezalel Academy.

His early work was rooted in figurative painting, focusing on landscapes, urban scenes and figures drawn from everyday life. By the late 1970s, however, Gerstein began questioning the traditional boundaries of the painted canvas. He started cutting figures out of his compositions, removing the background and allowing the image itself to occupy physical space.

This experimentation first led him toward wooden sculpture, before he embraced metal and laser-cutting technology in the 1990s. Gerstein became a pioneer of multi-layered laser-cut steel wall sculpture, creating compositions in which painted forms project outward from the wall and interact with real space and shadow. Painting was no longer confined to a rectangular surface: it became volume, depth and movement.

Cyclists, runners, dancers, urban crowds, butterflies, flowers and street scenes have become some of his most recognizable subjects. Through these recurring motifs, Gerstein captures the energy of the city, the movement of the human body and fleeting moments of everyday experience. In works such as 5th Avenue and his well-known cycling compositions, repeated figures create an almost choreographic visual rhythm.

Color is fundamental to his visual language. Reds, yellows, blues, greens and oranges overlap across different metal layers, while the physical distance between them creates genuine depth. The resulting works move between Pop Art, contemporary figuration and sculpture, while retaining an instantly recognizable identity. Gerstein has described this process as expanding painting into three-dimensional space.

His belief that art should remain closely connected to everyday life also explains his strong interest in public and monumental sculpture. Over the course of his career, Gerstein has created numerous large-scale works for public spaces in Israel and internationally, extending his colorful visual language far beyond the traditional gallery environment. Through this distinctive hybrid practice, David Gerstein transforms painting into sculpture and everyday movement into a visual spectacle, creating works that combine immediate accessibility with sophisticated technical construction.

Discover David Gerstein’s artworks available at Galerie De Medicis, Place des Vosges in Paris, and explore his iconic laser-cut metal wall sculptures through works combining color, movement, Pop Art and scenes from everyday life.