Samuel Beckett Listening to Music, 9 December 1976
Hard graphite on rag paper, 26.8 x 34.5 cm.

Margalit Fox reports in the 30 April issue of The New York Times the death of Avigdor Arikha, an Israeli painter “whose work captured both the haunting beauty and the looming menace of everyday things, a vision informed in no small part by his experience as a Holocaust survivor.” Arikha was a close friend of Samuel Beckett’s, the dramatist who served as the subject of several sketches by the artist, as well as How It Was, a fine small memoir by Arikha’s widow Anne Atik. A small selection of Arikha’s work appears along with the obituary here.