Early life and education

Navon was born as Arieh Kligman in 1909 in the town of Dunaivtsi (now modern-day Ukraine), the son of Malka, daughter of Rabbi Yitzhak Meir of Ostburg, and Moshe HaCohen son of Yitzhak Kligman. He immigrated to Israel with his family in 1919 (age 10) on the ship "Ruslan". Studied art in Yitzhak Frenkel's studio in Tel Aviv in the late 1920s.^[2]

Career and art

He has hundreds of paintings, mostly drawings in ink or charcoal, and dozens of portraits of public figures, writers, actors and artists. A selection of them appears in his book "Records". A film based on his drawings called "The Way of a Singer in the Desert" was created in 1956, in collaboration between him and Yaakov Agam and Aryeh Mambush. He taught drawing at the Avni Institute and the Oranim Kibbutz Seminary. Navon participated in many exhibitions in Israel and around the world. A solo exhibition was held for him at the Israel Museum in 1978. For his paintings, he won the Dizengoff prize for painting (1939) and twice the Jerusalem prize for painting (1941, 1944).

Family and recognition

From 1970, he was married to Latah nee Tzipkevich. His son is the recipient of the Israel Prize in Psychology, Professor David Navon. His older brother was the educator Shmuel Navon. Another brother, Zev Navon, was also an artist and a painting teacher. Another brother was named Chaim.^[3]

In 1975, he was selected by the International Theatre Institute as one of the 13 outstanding and innovative theater artists for the years 1970-75 (alongside director Peter Brook and others).

He won the Israel Prize for Performing Arts in 1996.^[1]He passed away in Tel Aviv in 1996, at the age of 87, and is buried in the Yarkon Cemetery.

A collection of letters sent to him is preserved in the National Library.^[4]