ITAMAR NEWMAN

During his compulsory service at the I.D.F. he served as a set designer for the “Nahal” Band. Designed “Caveret” band’s first record, “Foggy stories”. He designed and constructed sets for the theater and television programs. During the 1980s, he re-designed and reconstructed the “Pilz” classic coffee house in Tel Aviv, and restored theMontefiore carriage, now showing at Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem. Itamar illustrated books: Meir Ariel’s Poems, Danny Minster’s poem, The Water Babies, Dan Ben-Amotz’s, Doesn’t give a Damn and others. He also designed and illustrated magazine covers. 

Specialized in engraving and etching in London (1975). Designed puppets for the Muppet Show in New York (1985).
As a musician, he has collaborated with Rami Fortis, Barry Sakharov and others. He was one of the initiators and founders of the Rimon school of Jazz music in Tel Aviv in collaboration with Yehuda Eder, and he composed music for the album.
Itamar 99 was active in the Israeli film industry, until 1998, as a filmmaker, consultant and art director.
He received the Israeli Academy Award for art direction of the film Tel Aviv stories.
Directed dozens of commercials, which, in addition, often employed his scripts, his designs, and occasionally his music.
His paintings and sculptures were shown in solo and in group exhibitions in Israel.
In the 1990s he made paintings and sculptures about the holocaust, a subject which had preoccupied him for many years. The result was a one-man show of paintings, sculptures and multi-media works at the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art, 1997, titled “193945 – Homage to Primo Levi”.
At the end of 1997 he began to practice and study Buddhism under the guidance of the monk Ajahn Ofer Adi.
In 1998 he established in Ramat Gan the Island Studio for Art Studies, a preparatory workshop for higher studies of art and design, where he taught painting and drawing. In his teaching he aim was to developing the students’ power of observation and awareness, together with including skills for drawing and painting.
In 2005 he founded the Newman association, in order to establish a Buddhist center in Israel.
In May 2010, he and his wife Liora moved to Yavne’el, where they established the Center for Meditation Practice in Israel, headed by the monk Ajahn Ofer Adi.
These days he is re-establishing his Studio in Yavne’el, As a preliminary step for the opening of an art gallery in Yavne’el, that will focus on art with a message of non-violence.