Renowned Artist Itzchak Tarkay’s story is both tragic and magical. He was born in 1935 in Subotica on the Yugoslav-Hungarian border, at a dark place and time when Europe was on the brink of war and Jewish families like his own were being targeted by the rising Nazi party. In 1944, when he was only 9 years old, Tarkay and his whole family were captured and sent to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Miraculously they all survived. When the Allied Forces liberated the camp a year later at the end of World War II, his family returned home. Having escaped almost certain death, young Itzchak found, in art, a way to express his love for life. Today he is revered not just as a survivor, but as an artist who has redeemed tragedy with the power of the paint brush.

In savoring the sunny colors and sensual scenes of Tarkay’s widely popular paintings, you would never guess his traumatic prologue. Whether capturing elegant ladies reclining in opulent drawing rooms or fashionable ladies passing a lazy afternoon in a sophisticated café, his world of paintings is a realm of pleasure that celebrates women.  Then it should not be surprising that the featured oil painting that is seen here and available for auction is here because of an encounter TARKAY had with a woman who believed in his art – way back in the beginning before all the world wide acclaim.

The woman named Harriet who consigns this master work for auction today, remembers first meeting Tarkay nearly 40 years ago in Israel: “I took my son to Israel for his Bar Mitzvah in December 1987. While walking thru Jaffa one evening we came upon an Art Gallery with a gorgeous painting in the window - I said, WOW!  I went in and talked with the shop owner who said it was by the Israeli artist Tarkay. She gave me his representative’s telephone number and we called and took a taxi there to his gallery at 10pm on a Saturday night where we saw many of his paintings. I told Itzchak that his paintings would sell extremely well in the US and if he wanted to come to America - I would put on a presentation in my apartment for all my friends. When I arrived back in NY - the phone rang and it was Tarkay...saying “Were you serious?”  “If so, I’ll come.” We arranged for him and the art to come to America in September 1988. On a Monday evening, in the pouring rain, my friends showed up and bought up all the paintings that were offered. I did as well. It was such a success that he decided to move to New York and rent a gallery in SOHO!  It was so successful he never left! I returned to Israel a few years later and was invited to Tarkay’s home - met him and his wife and enjoyed the stories of his US success.”

Harriet shares this wonderful creation from Tarkay with the world for the first time - proudly noting that it's never been to auction until today. She remembers her friend and artist and the gratitude he had for the opportunity to share his art. It was a trademark that many remember as being the true signature of this humble man - that and his gentle nature and humility despite reaching enormous success and fame.

Tarkay received an art scholarship in the early 1950s and eventually studied at the Avni Institute of Art and Design in Tel Aviv, graduating in 1956. Among the important Israeli artists who influenced and mentored him were Moshe Mokady, Marcel Janco, Yehezkel Streichman and Avigdor Stematsky. His career was not a straight ascent. After early recognition, he spent roughly 15 years away from painting, before returning with a major one-man exhibition in Tel Aviv in 1975.

It has been almost 15 years since Tarkay left us in 2012, in Detroit, where he visited as a guest of Park West Gallery. Still his paintings and works of art live on as do the stories of how they were created and how he and they came to America. He’s left an enduring mark mentoring younger Israeli artists including David Najar, Yuval Wolfson and Mark Kanovich who often visited his studio. Tarkay was also the only artist to collaborate with Yaacov Agam (1928-2026). He and Agam created two paintings which incorporated both artists' imagery in a single painting.

Tarkay’s work is influenced by French Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism, particularly Matisse and Toulouse-Lautrec. Tarkay's early works, some of which the Israeli art critic Joav BarEl classified as made in the De Staëlian style,were completed by him personally. His later works were drawn by him and then colored in by assisting artists on staff. This art work featured at Sarasota Estate Auction is an early work done entirely by the master’s hand.

Finally, what makes Tarkay's career so compelling is the extraordinary contrast between his life and his art. A child who survived one of Europe's darkest chapters became an artist whose life's work was almost an argument for the opposite: beauty, human connection, color, music, conversation, femininity, leisure and the simple pleasure of being alive. That makes Tarkay more than a successful painter of beautiful women. His career can be seen as a remarkable transformation of survival into beauty.