David Azuz, who was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1942, has the enviable life of an artist living in one of the most beautiful capitals of Europe, Paris. He has lived in Paris since 1958 and returns to Tel Aviv each summer.

David Azuz has developed a style rich in color. His paintings are masterfully drawn and full of curiosity for the simple details of life. Azuz’s subjects in bistros and markets, whether they be in Rome, Paris, Tel Aviv or elsewhere, express the solitude of the individual. They become symbolic of the universal citizen and are deeply moving in their pathos and search for themselves.

Elke Sommer was born in Berlin, Germany on November 5, 1940. Sommer began painting watercolors as a
teenager. While vacationing in Italy, she won a beauty title (“Miss Viareggio Turistica”) which caught the attention of film director, Vittorio De Sica who cast her in his films. She became a sex symbol in Europe and by the early 1960s she was working in films in Hollywood. When not working in movies and television she painted as a hobby. In 1965 she held her first one-woman show at the McKenzie Galleries in Beverly Hills. Her paintings appear to be inspired by the works of Marc Chagall. Since 1993 she has been the wife of hotelier Wolf Walther. “I would rather be known as a painter who acts than an actress who paints.” This quote by Elke Sommer says it all.

Michael Knigin was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1942. After graduating college in 1966, Knigin started teaching at the Pratt Graphic Center in Manhattan, an extension of the Pratt Institute, devoted to fine arts and graphic prints. There he started a fine art lithography workshop. After a year and a half he opened his own publishing company, Chiron Press, and added a silkscreen printing facility. This was the first facility in the United States that combined lithography and screen-printing. The shop remained in existence for over seven years, printing and publishing editions for the most renowned contemporary artists, including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Paul Jenkins. In 1970 and 1971 he co-authored two books on lithography, which were published by Van Nostrand/Reinhold. One of these books was a textbook on fine art lithography and was used extensively in schools in the United States and Britain. After selling Chiron Press in 1974, Knigin was invited by the Israel Museum and the Jerusalem Foundation to establish the first professional lithography workshop in Israel and to train a group of young Israeli artists. While in Israel, he collaborated with the Ministry of Labor and Education, along with nationally and internationally known artists from Israel, the United States and Europe. After his tenure at the graphic center, he returned to New York and preceded to create his own prints and paintings. Sadly, the artist passed away in early 2015.