About the Artist

This website is dedicated to the art work of Yoram Kleiner. Born as Robert Kleiner in 1934 in Paris France. The events of his childhood influenced the course of his life for the future and his artistic path as well as the way they ended at a relatively young age. 

Yoram was a 5-year-old boy when the Nazis entered France, his parents were Jews from Poland who immigrated to Paris. The family hid in their home with the help of Christian neighbors, but his father was immediately taken to the camps and his mother and the boy fled and wandered further in an attempt to hide. At some point the mother put him in a monastery where he stayed for a while and then he was transferred to a peasant family (in the Vichy area) who hid him in the basement along with their animals. He went through very difficult experiences in hiding. At the end of the war his mother returned and took him, but his father was murdered. ‎ Back In Paris Yoram did not go back to school but was self-taught and taught himself by reading books, and especially by his virtuoso drawing ability. He took a lot of notes and also learned from works in the museums of Paris. At some point he entered a Zionist Jewish youth movement, and found his place there. Together with his fellow movement members he immigrated to Israel as a young man to Kibbutz Beit Keshet.

In the kibbutz he was completely committed to the kibbutz activities, and also contributed his artistic talent, at the same time he started painting all the time. He also touched other creative fields with different techniques, but drawing was his main tool. Drawing lines with different types of thin marker.

In the kibbutz he met Tzipi, born in Argentina, and started a family with her. He was a loving and dedicated father to his three children.

For many years, Yoram worked in various jobs in the kibbutz,  It was only in later years that memories of his childhood and youth of the Holocaust came to him. He began to sink into himself, into an isolated space where only the creation served as an escape from the pain and distress of the soul. He left the world in 1993 at the age of 59 without leaving behind a letter or any sign of the fateful decision he had made.