Exhibition Honoring Teddy Kollek

Sunday October 14, 2007, at 6.00 p.m.

at CHARIM GALERIE

Dorotheergasse 12, 1st floor, 1010 Vienna

Pinchas Litvinovski - Yohanan Lakicevic - Arnold Newman - David Soussana - Osnat Kollek-Sachs - Oskar Kokoshka - Jossi Stern - Yaacov Agam - Daniel Enkaoua - Avigdor Arikha - Motke Blum - Erro Gudmundson - David Gershtein - Niki de Saint Phalle - Jean Tinguely

I watched Teddy Kollek in his far reaching endeavors throughout the many years of my tenure in the Jerusalem Municipality. In his colorful personality was a wonderful mixture of a stormy and exciting nature with sweeping personal charm.

Art gave him great pleasure and relaxation which radiated on the people surrounding him. Despite Teddy’s stormy character and the impatience he would momentarily display, Teddy knew how to stand patiently before artists of various disciplines and creative genres to bear witness to the great works of art which his charismatic personality and great character inspired in different artistic mediums.

Teddy dreamed of a city that would be a model of tolerance and solidarity for the great variety of communities which reside in Jerusalem.

Teddy wanted to turn Jerusalem into Israel’s capital, a cultural capital of the world, and was the right man at the right place at the right time, which in his hands became a center of national and international life.

Kollek transformed Jerusalem into the center of his existence and infected people the world over with his enthusiastic spirit - people who could not resist his totally addictive personal charm- to fulfill the city’s destiny.

His love of culture and art spurred his support of my establishing the Municipal Art Gallery and the first art studio in Jerusalem.

The exhibit and the catalog represent the artists, who through their own personality saw their own “Teddy”.

David Soussana
Artist, and Mayor’s Advisor on Art and Design