Conceptual artist and painter Michael Druks was born to Jewish parents in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine (now the State of Israel) on 26 September 1940. During the 1960s he studied at the Art Institute in Bat Yam and the Advanced School of Art in Tel Aviv, becoming part of a local avant-garde and theatre network and focusing on environmental concerns. In 1970 he won the Working Award for the Creative Artist from the American-Israeli Cultural Foundation and worked in the USA for three months, followed by three months in Britain on a British Council Scholarship. In 1971 he returned to Israel and became a teacher at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem and staged his first street event, removing a public noticeboard in Tel-Aviv. During the 1960s and 70s, he emerged as a pivotal figure among the new wave of Israeli artists, who fused experimental theatre, painting, and graphic mapping with emerging video art. He was the recipient of awards including the Aika Braun Prize for a Young Artist (1972) and the Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art (1973).
Druks left for Europe in the early 1970s, initially settling in the Netherlands, then moving to London in 1972, where he acquired dual Israeli-British citizenship and, in 1974, co-founded the Art Meeting Place in Covent Garden. He established himself as a conceptual artist and a progressive media activist with works such as his six-panel video ‘Reordering of Communication: Forgery/Action’ (1973), critiquing the media and empty political rhetoric. His diverse oeuvre also encompassed painting, drawing, collage, photography, installation and video. One of his best-known pieces, ‘Druksland Physical & Social 15 January 1974, 11.30 am’, a conceptual avant-garde map and self-portrait, plays with concepts of boundaries, land and identity.
Druks exhibited widely in the UK, including group shows at the Camden Arts Centre, the the ICA, the Serpentine and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, and a solo show at the Whitechapel Gallery (1976), as well as internationally, including at Dokumenta 6 in Kassel, as well as in Berlin, Bern, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Cologne, Maastricht, Montreal, São Paulo and his native Israel. In 1977 he staged a performance in the Ludwig Forum, formerly the Neue Galerie in Aachen, West Germany.
Michael Druks died in London, England on 22 April 2022. His work is in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the Tavistock Centre (Camden) and the V&A.
