Michael Gross

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(b Tiberias, Palestine [now Israel], 1920). Israeli painter and sculptor. After studying at the Teachers' Seminary in Jerusalem from 1936 to 1940, he studied architecture at the Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa (1943-5) and art at the Acad?mie des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1951-4). In 1954 he returned to Israel and began working as a painter and sculptor in the artists' village of Ein Hod. In early paintings such as A Roof and a Window (1966-7; Jerusalem, Israel Mus.) Gross simplified form in order to concentrate on proportion, on boldly juxtaposed broad areas of colour and on the size and placement of each element; a similar reductive process was applied also to his early sculptures and to later pieces, whether in painted iron or in other materials such as white concrete (e.g. the monumental sculpture at Simon Bolivar Park in Jerusalem, 1974). In later paintings such as Light of Jerusalem (triptych, 1974; Jerusalem, Israel Mus.) he often juxtaposed large panels into polyptych formats to build bold shapes of empty off-white fields and broad tonal patches; occasionally these were supplemented by the textures of objects such as wooden beams, burlap and rope physically attached to the picture, as in Female Nude and a Log of Wood II (1981-2; Jerusalem, Israel Mus.). In spite of the extreme economy of his work, Gross's rough and freely-brushed surfaces and his consistent use of soft pastel colouring suggest a direct link with the Israeli landscape.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Michael Gross may refer to:

• Michael Gross (actor) (born 1947), American actor best known for his role in the sitcom Family Ties and the film Tremors and its sequels
• Michael Gross (artist) (1920–2004), Israeli painter, sculptor and conceptual artist
• Michael Gross (swimmer) (born 1964), German swimmer, multiple Olympic medalist
• Michael Gross (science writer) (born 1963), American science journalist
• Michael Gross (writer) (born 1952), American author and journalist
• Michael Gross (editor), television editor, writer, and director
• Michael Gross (politician) (born 1956), German politician, elected to the Bundestag in 2009.
• Michael C. Gross, American artist and film producer
• Michael Joseph Gross (born 1970), American author and journalist
• Michael L. Gross (born 1954), political and medical ethicist

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