About | Chaim Oren

Chaim Oren (1948 - 2025) is an artist whose career spans more than five decades. He settled in the Netherlands in the early 1970s, where he developed a distinctive artistic practice rooted in experience, material sensitivity, and an intense engagement with colour.

For most of his life, Oren worked figuratively as both a painter and sculptor. Only in recent years did a profound shift occur in his work. After decades of observing and shaping recognizable forms, he began to look differently. Objects gradually dissolved into pure form and colour, until abstraction became complete. In this transition, imagination itself became the form. What emerged was not a break with the past, but a deepening of it.

Oren’s abstract paintings are the result of a slow, disciplined process. He begins without a predefined image, allowing colour to lead the composition. Each colour is mixed by hand; nothing is taken directly from the tube. Colour, for Oren, is not decorative but active—listening, responding, sometimes clashing, sometimes reconciling. Certain colours resist one another, while others need mediation. A line of orange, recurring in his work, often serves as a place of balance and resolution.

Working with oil paint, Oren allows time to play its role. Paintings rest for days or weeks while he observes them in silence, entering into a dialogue between colour, space, and composition. Gestures are deliberate and irreversible: a single line must be made in one movement, guided by the whole body rather than the hand alone. This physical awareness reflects his background as both painter and sculptor.

Community and shared knowledge have always been central to Oren’s practice. Having grown up on a kibbutz, collective work and exchange remain fundamental values. Since the 1970s, he has been actively involved in artist communities in Amsterdam, particularly in the Bijlmer area, where he still lives and works. His studio functions not only as a place of solitude but also as a space for weekly conversations with fellow artists, moments of reflection, critique, and mutual growth.

Alongside his painting practice, Oren has realized numerous public sculptures and installations, including Mama Aisa (1986), a monumental work dedicated to Mother Earth, which remains a powerful presence in Amsterdam Zuidoost. His work has been exhibited widely in the Netherlands, both in solo and group exhibitions, and has been featured in various publications and media.

For Chaim Oren, art is not a private possession but a shared responsibility. What is created must be brought into the open. Art offers alternative ways of seeing, feeling, and understanding the world, and it is in that act of sharing that its true meaning is fulfilled.