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Raphael Perez is an Israeli artist known for his naive style paintings of Tel Aviv city. His work captures the essence of the city and its urban landscape, highlighting its iconic buildings and sites. Perez's paintings create an idealized atmosphere in which reality is beautified and presented in a dreamy, fantastic manner. Perez's work is characterized by its vibrant colors and cheerful depiction of life in Tel Aviv. The streets in his paintings are full of people and loving couples hugging and kissing, while the boulevards are lined with well-kept trees and bushes. Perez's work presents a vision of Israel's future as a promising startup nation, with a beautiful, clean, and naive cityscape featuring towering skyscrapers reaching towards the sky. Through his art, Perez portrays Tel Aviv as a modern and advanced city. His paintings are a celebration of the city's unique character and its place as a cultural hub in Israel. Perez's work is a testament to the beauty and vitality of Tel Aviv and its people. In conclusion, Raphael Perez is an Israeli artist whose naive style paintings of Tel Aviv city capture the essence of the city and its urban landscape. His work presents an idealized vision of the city that is both beautiful and vibrant. Perez's paintings are a celebration of Tel Aviv and its unique character as a modern and advanced city. raphael perez is an Israeli artist known for his homoerotic gay art and colorful urban landscapes painted in a naïve style. He was born in Jerusalem in 1965 and has been living and working in Tel Aviv since 1995. Perez plays an important role in actively promoting LGBT art and culture in Tel Aviv. Perez’s artistic career began when he was still living with women. He often painted heterosexual couples, but even then, one discerned Perez’s inner conflicts and attempt to grapple with the complexities of couplehood. His early work deals with the complexity of the relationship between a man and a woman, presenting an estranged relationship in which there is no connection between the two. Peretz then moved to a stage of concealment, presenting men who do not reveal their faces and are debating about their sexual identity. He then created a large series of works dealing with the joy and idealization of homosexual life and love. These paintings are in a naïve style with pride flags in the background and loving couples on the streets of Tel Aviv, in lakes, in recreation places and iconic sites in the city. Peretz also created a series of Israeli soldiers, expressing the meaning of the army to every Israeli citizen. In the years 1999-2004, he was one of the first artists in the world to create a large naïve series of works dealing with a same-sex family of two men raising a child. Another innovative subject was a series of men giving birth. Over the years, Peretz also began to see the less beautiful side of homosexuality and the complexity that exists within the gay community. He moved to series dealing with an urban landscape with couples of all kinds. Is there anything specific you would like to know about his work? A project of 17 portraits of activists from the gay community in Israel, the works were painted in 2005-2003 The drawings are in a hyper-realistic style of activists and activities from the gay community in Israel, of course there are other iconic figures that I did not draw so I apologize in advance to them, the activists are from the political, cultural and nightlife fields who contributed to the gay community during the 80's and 90's of the twentieth century. Professor Uzi Even - Professor of Chemistry. The first homosexual MK in Israel, contributed to the promotion of LGBT rights in the workplace, adoption of children, gay marriage. Theo Mintz - one of the founders of the Gay Lesbian and Transgender Association in Israel. Ran Kotzer - film director. TV show producer, documentary maker of the films: Cause of Death Homophobia, Gay Games and a documentary on Amos Gutman. Tal Eitan - fashion and advertising photographer, exhibition curator and nightlife man. Avi Sofer - jeweler and glass maker, former chairman of the LGBT Association. Chai Ben Shoshan lives - a man of the night life and was chosen for the Israel Man of the Year competition. Itai Pankas - former chairman of the LGBT Association, one of the founders of the gay center, branches of the association in the periphery, and a former activist in municipal politics who greatly promoted the rights of the community in Tel Aviv. Irit Rabinowitz - Israeli painter, born in Beer Sheva. Michal Eden - lawyer and the first gay politician in Israel. Active in KLF - a feminist lesbian community, promoting the issue of surrogacy, proud parenthood, LGBT rights, the establishment of Beit Dror - a daycare center for boys and girls from the community who were thrown out of their families. Yuval Hatz - event producer and triathlon athlete and promotes sports in the gay community. Alon Strykovski - former chairman of the LGBT Association. Zvi Mermelstein - a homosexual poet, the author of the masterful book "Suiting Upper and Lower Openings". Shaz - Israeli poet and writer. Eli Sharon - IDF officer with the rank of the first proud colonel. In the past he was involved in promoting gay tourism and having a couple therapist. Rami Hasman - Advertiser and one of the leaders of the fight for carrier rights and the promotion of information about AIDS in Israel. Aitzik Yoshua - journalist and former chairman of the LGBT Association. Gadi Sasson - Journalist, writer and editor of the Pink Time magazine. The process of working on the series of portrait paintings was through a meeting at the activists' homes, I photographed them and then I worked with the technique of photorealism on these paintings (like the famous painter Chuck Close) I started with a very careful drawing on a white canvas - I did the drawing with a projector Slides when the photograph is projected onto the white canvas and then a kind of map is created that gives the contours and tonalities of the color from light to dark, after I finished the drawing then I chose the color palette that I want to use to create the portraits, as a painter I almost touch all types of techniques: From painting in the style of photorealism, many paintings and drawings were made from observing objects, still life, flowers, figures or from freely observing any kind of photography... and of course many paintings were made freely from the imagination, so technically I allow myself to use a huge selection of most painting techniques , also with the many years of experience I have experimented with all mediums from pencil drawings, markers, markers, ink, oil paints, acrylic paints, watercolors, gouache paints, works on paper and canvas fabrics, works on wooden plywood, works on books, I was surprised to see that most of the activists, regardless of their activities for the gay community, are dominant figures in the life of Israeli society, most of them officers in the IDF (as opposed to the image that gays have as if they are not suitable for the army) with professions that contribute greatly to the development of Israeli society on an economic, cultural and social level. Most of them are in a high economic situation and from the elite of Israeli society, I painted them in their natural environment, in the beautiful and well-kept houses and some of them are just a portrait without a background. My goal was actually to show the bourgeois side of the community, through the painting of the conservative realist style, through the portrait against the background of the interior of the well-kept house in which they live, and choosing activists of all ages (as opposed to the many representations given to gays who are shown infrequently or marginally, or excessive preoccupation with the culture of body worship , the beauty and youth as is often shown in the gay community. I also have quite a few such works... In the series of portraits, I wanted to emphasize the occupation and contribution to the community. This project was featured on the pages of the Pink Time magazine for months, with the resume description of each and every activist. In 2009 on the day of the Pride Parade, (a mass event with hundreds of thousands of people) Avi Sofer curated the exhibition dedicated to this project of the activists' paintings in the gay center. A large and significant part of these works were purchased by the collector Amos Shokan who purchased hundreds of my works. These paintings continue to receive great exposure on the Internet following the many publications given over the years to this special project. For me it was a way to give back to the gay community for the many years that gay community settings such as businesses, cafes, magazines, gay centers presented my works, supported me as an artist and members of the community also purchased works of art from me and allowed me to continue creating and working, a complex task in itself for any artist to survive from his art. Over the years my work as an artist has changed and I would characterize it in two main painting styles, one painting style is the realistic painting with which I created the series of paintings of heterosexual couples, gays, lesbians, pregnant women, the series of portraits from the gay community in the style of photorealism, a realistic painting of the partner Assaf Hennigsberg in a realistic style - colorful and the series of paintings of the realistic expressive flower couples, and on the other hand there is the other style which is the naive painting with which I mainly painted the urban landscape of cities in Israel and in the world, a kind of idealization of reality and the street paintings full of vegetation, colorful buildings and the use of bright and contrasting colors and a series of naive paintings Under the influence of children's drawings with which I created the series of 40 artist books and other drawings that are influenced by children's drawings...

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