Celebrated Israeli painters and University of Texas visiting artists Anna Lukashevsky, Asya Lukin, and Natalia Zourabova will be painting the scene at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW), the cutting edge arts festival in Austin, which starts Friday. The trio aims to create a fresh artistic perspective on SXSW through a series of scenic portraits.
SXSW, running March 10-19, 2017, hosts music, film and interactive festivals that draws tens of thousands of leading artists and spectators. The festival started 20 years ago to connect new talent and ideas, and has since become a major global pop culture event.
Lukashevsky, Lukin, and Zourabova, who came to UT with the Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artists program, will be capturing the spirit of SXSW in sketchbooks and on canvas when they set up their easels at different locations throughout the festival.
“The scene at SXSW is unlike any other location we have ever painted. When we found out we would be in Austin during the festival, we knew we had to get involved and capture the atmosphere through our art,” said Zourabova.
The three Israeli painters help form an acclaimed collective art group called New Barbizon, which is inspired by the realist 19th century French Barbizon School. New Barbizon members place their easels in urban settings putting a contemporary stroke on the art, unlike the French Barbizon artists, who painted the landscape. They are also teaching a course this semester in the UT Department of Art and Art History, sponsored in part by the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies.
The Visiting Israeli Artists program, an initiative of the Israel Institute, a D.C.-based academic institute that aims to enhance the study of modern Israel, brings Israeli filmmakers, choreographers, musicians, writers and visual artists for residencies at top universities and other cultural organizations in North America.
The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation established the program in 2008 to foster interactions between the artists and their communities, exposing a broader audience to contemporary Israeli culture.