Born 1947 in Casablanca, Morocco
Jacob El Hanani
Jacob El Hanani
“It is a personal challenge to bring drawing to the extreme and see how far my eyes and fingers can go.”
– Jacob El Hanani
For five decades, Jacob El Hanani (born 1947) has produced painstakingly detailed pen-and-ink drawings composed of countless microscopic marks woven into all-over abstractions. Often called “the grandfather of micro-drawing,” El Hanani’s works need to be seen up close to appreciate their intricate craftsmanship. From afar, his drawings appear as shimmering abstract squares, but at close range elaborate patterns emerge and the viewer appreciates their profuse, and often nearly unfathomable, level of detail.
Employing a range of forms—from minuscule linear strokes to tiny circles to elegantly written letters of the Hebrew alphabet and densely crosshatched lines—El Hanani’s innumerable marks are fluidly strung and linked into evocative patterns. Despite their apparent abstraction, his drawings are often suggestive of atmospheric landscapes, aerial views or topographical maps, carefully woven textiles, and celestial bodies.
Exactingly made by hand in the unforgiving medium of ink on paper, El Hanani’s drawings are achieved through extraordinary self-discipline. Working without a magnifying glass in ten-minute stints—the artist has to take breaks to rest his eyes—these drawings take months or even years to complete, marking the passage of time and the limits of human endurance. The deliberate slowness of El Hanani’s meditative work strikes a counterpoint to the fast-paced tempo of today’s world; his images require more than a few seconds of our attention for us to marvel at their complexity and the remarkable process of their creation.
Jacob El Hanani in his SoHo studio, 1974
"The chief pleasure of the work derives from discovering the micrographic level and admiring the remarkable hand-and-eye skill that has gone into its execution. It would, I suppose, be like the pleasure the first generation of microscopists took when they discovered the tiny worlds their instruments all at once made visible—how a calm pool of water teems with living creatures to whose existence humans were previously blind."
– Arthur Danto
El Hanani’s complex works are layered with historical and cultural references reflecting the artist’s varied cultural and personal history. Born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1947, the artist was raised in Israel and studied art in Tel Aviv and Paris before moving to New York in the early 1970s, where he lives and works today. His drawings are rooted in the ancient Hebrew tradition of micrography, a medieval practice dating back to the 9th century in which Jewish scribes used miniature letters to form images or decorative patterns in manuscripts. El Hanani fuses this spiritual tradition with a contemporary Minimalist sensibility—Minimalism was at the height of its influence when he moved to New York and made an indelible impression on the artist. The influence of the artist’s heritage, art history, and contemporary politics also informs his practice.
"These are not drawings that one can comprehend with a snapshot view; they require a commitment of time and attention simply to be seen, let alone understood. They insist on a unique protocol of viewing in which the usual strategies of positioning and time spent looking are useless. This is slow art at its purest, as slow in its making as in its viewing. But be forewarned, beneath this appearance of patience, beneath this modesty of means, beneath this partisanship with the diminutive lies a grand artistic ambition, a major achievement."
– Raphael Rubinstein
Jacob El Hanani Solo Exhibitions
2021 Jacob El Hanani: Recent Works on Canvas, Acquavella Galleries, NY
2017 Jacob EL Hanani: Linescape, Acquavella Galleries, NY
2015 Jacob El Hanani Drawings, Acquavella Galleries, NY
2014 The Art of the Line, Sammer Gallery LLC, Miami, FL
2012 Linear Landscape: Ink Drawings, Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas, TX
2008 Recent Work, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, MA
2005 Drawing 1978-2005, Mills College, Oakland, CA
2004 Jacob El Hanani Drawings 1971-1987, Gallery Schlesinger, New York, NY
2003 OSP Gallery, Boston, MA
2002 Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY
Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, PA
2000 Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York, NY
Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, PA
1999 Miller/Block Gallery, Boston, MA
1998 Todd Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1995 Yoshii Gallery, New York, NY
1993 Galerie Renee Ziegler, Zurich
1988 Galerie Gilbert Brownstone, Paris
1978 Galerie Denise René, Paris
1977 Galerie Denise René, New York, NY
1975 Galerie Denise René, Paris
