This trail starts here

Painter and sculptor Yehiel Shemi was born in Haifa. He made his first wood and stone sculptures at Kibbutz Beit-Ha’arava in the Negev, which he joined in 1939 as a construction worker. Shemi helped found Kibbutz Kabri in Western Galilee, where he was a member from 1949 until his death; his studio and a Sculpture Garden of his work are open to the public. He produced his first metal welded sculptures from the steel found in sunken ships in Haifa harbor.

In the 1950s, Shemi led the transition in Israel from figurative stone sculpture to abstract sculpting in iron. From the late 1950s Shemi received commissions for major monumental sculptures in metal and concrete. These works are noted for their clean surfaces and compositions of intersecting angles, devoid of all associative detail. He was a prominent member of the New Horizons Group (1955-1965). Between 1977 and 1979, Yehiel Shemi taught environmental design at Technion. Shemi was awarded the Israel Prize in Sculpture in 1986 – the same year in which he created Syllables 6. Rising from a rectangular base, three metal plates connected by large bolts resemble a segment of a circle.

Gift of the artist