Minimalist sculptures based on drawings from a 50-year-old book (16 photos)

Israeli designer Ori Niv has created a series of metal sculptures that exactly replicate drawings of animals from an old book. The history of this book is quite interesting: firstly, its author is Grandma Ori, and secondly, it contains drawings of animals from the first Tel Aviv zoo, which was closed in 1980, but forever remained in people’s memory as a symbol of the city .

Word from the author:

Malka Vanetik was my grandfather's sister. She didn’t have her own family, and I didn’t have other grandmothers, so I treated her like my own grandmother. She was born in Odessa in 1919 and immigrated to Israel in 1923. She worked as a secretary and simultaneously studied drawing at the Military Academy - first in Alexandria, then in Israel. She was familiar with many famous and respected artists of that time - Isaac Frenkel, Mokadi Moshe, Marcel Janko, Avigdor Stematsky, Yehezkel Streichman, Hannah Tversky and others.

In 1967, she published a book of drawings, Animals: Characters with Character, which featured 24 illustrations of animals from Tel Aviv's first, historic, old zoo. This zoo was closed in 1980, but it is still remembered and revered, and the shopping center built on this site is called Gan Haair (City Garden).

A few months ago I accidentally came across this old and tattered book. It turned out that it was published exactly 50 years ago. I looked at the amazing illustrations again and thought that it would be a great pity if no one saw these drawings and they were forgotten forever.

I decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the book in my own way: I selected several drawings and turned them into metal sculptures using laser cutting. I have tried very hard to preserve the grace and clean lines inherent in these illustrations as much as possible.

Each sculpture is a reflection of a frozen moment, the movement of animals from a zoo that was closed decades ago. And it’s strange, but now it seems to me that somehow I managed to bring them back to life.