The Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan is dead. He died at the age of 90 in Tel Aviv, as Mayor Ron Chuldai announced on Twitter on Saturday.
In Germany, Karavan was known, among other things, for the memorial for the Nazi genocide of up to 500,000 Sinti and Roma in Berlin, which was inaugurated in 2012.
Karavan was born in Tel Aviv in 1930 as the son of Polish immigrants.
His parents' families lost many members during the Holocaust.
Therefore, the memory of the extermination of the Jews is an important topic in his work.
Karavan first learned drawing art at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, later he studied painting in Florence and Paris.
In 1996 he received the Kaiserring from Goslar.
Karavan has created sensational works of art all over the world.
Its trademarks are accessible monuments - such as Heinrich-Böll-Platz in Cologne or the “Street of Human Rights” at the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg.
Appreciation for the "son of the city"
His “Passagen” memorial site in Portbou, Spain, completed in 1994, is particularly well known.
It is reminiscent of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, who died in the small Spanish border town in 1940 while on the run from the National Socialists.
Karavan also created many monumental landscape works of art in his Israeli homeland, including the Negev Brigade Monument in Beershev and the “White City” monument in Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv Mayor Chuldai praised Karavan as "the son of the city and an honorary citizen of the city" and "an artist who has achieved renown all over the world".
In his hometown on the Mediterranean, he “left traces physically and spiritually”.