Bio
Born 1942 in Jerusalem, Palestine, Vladimir Tamari—painter, inventor, physicist, illustrator, graphic designer— is among the most esteemed of all Palestinian artists today, and a true Renaissance man. His artworks are found in museum collections worldwide, including the British Museum, l'Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, Darat al Funun, and the Royal Collection in Jordan. Painting ceaselessly and prolifically since his youth, Tamari studied physics and art at the American University of Beirut as well as painting at St. Martin's School of Art in London before spending time in the U.S. and the Middle East and finally settling in Tokyo, Japan, where he has lived for 44 years. He is known for his “works of ingenious depth and sensuality”, marked by his breathtaking mastery of abstract watercolor in portraying “resplendent, powerful landscapes of living light” which draw on memories of his youth in Palestine, experience of life in exile, and of life in Japan, whose art, culture, and paintings have deeply influenced him. “Like the Old City”, writes poet David H. Shapiro, his paintings “are humane, beautiful, sorrowing, and luminous with joy”. A recent ongoing project is a series of musical paintings, 75 to date, each made while listening exclusively to the music of a particular composer over a period of about a month. Since 1980, alongside his artwork, he has conducted research and publications in optics, imaging, and auto-stereoscopic displays. He has held U.K., Japanese, and U.S. patents for Arabic typography, as well as for three-dimensional and perspective drawing devices and for an invention to cancel optical diffraction. His writings have appeared in various publications such as Mawaqif, Optoelectronics and Leonardo, a journal for art and science, of which he was an international co-editor. In 2005 he published his Beautiful Universe theory that unifies Relativity and Quantum Mechanics starting from new first principles. Vladimir lives in Tokyo with his wife Kyoko; the artist and curator Vera Tamari is his sister.
Collections
Musée, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris
British Museum, London
Bryn Mawr College, U.S.A.
Private Royal Collection, Amman, Jordan
Jordanian National Art Museum , Amman, Jordan
Birzeit University, Palestine
Private Collections in Japan, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Greece, Switzerland, Germany, France, U.S.A., Dubai, Australia, Great Britain , Syria and Sweden