The powerful story behind the Archibald People’s Choice winner
After three months on display, gallery-goers have voted for a people’s choice award to go to a hyper-realistic portrait of a proud Jewish advocate.
An artist’s portrayal of a Jewish leader produced just weeks after the Bondi massacre has claimed a prestigious award.
Michael Zavros claimed the Archibald People’s Choice Award for his portrait of Alex Ryvchin, who he called an “unmistakably and unashamedly Jewish” leader.
After more than 45,000 votes, Zavros was presented with the award and a $5000 cash prize for his hyper-realistic piece depicting the co-head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
The artist was inspired by a deep respect for Ryvchin’s leadership of the Jewish community, as well as an uncanny likeness between the two men.
“A few years ago, my mother thought she saw me on TV, but it wasn’t, it was Alex,” Zavros said.
“As a natural leader, he spoke with clarity and conviction about the grief within his community and the changes he feared were emerging in our nation.”
The painting was created after the two men met in early January at a beach in Sydney’s east, just weeks after the Bondi terror attack.
“I wanted to paint him in water, or the sea, which carries so much rich symbolism,” the artist said.
Also included was a tefillin, which is a small black leather box with leather straps that contains scrolls inscribed with verses from the Torah.
Zavros said the cultural symbols matter as they can express faith, history, and belonging, yet too often are used to divide and to harm.
It was so important to the artwork, the portrait was officially named Alex With His Tefillin in the Sea.
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“It’s something that binds Jewish people to thousands of years of custom, it binds us to our almighty, and for me personally, binds me to someone who was very dear to me, someone who I lost at Bondi,” Ryvchin said.
“Every time I would see him, without fail, we would do tefillin together and in the moments before he was killed … I’m sure at this moment he’s smiling at what he’s seeing.”
A couple of years ago, Zavros took a DNA test and unexpectedly discovered that he had Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, alongside his Greek and Irish ancestry, which is a new side to himself he is still learning about.
“It’s worth reminding ourselves how fortunate we are to live in this great Western liberal democracy that welcomed my family from Cyprus in the 1950s, and welcomed Alex who arrived from the Ukraine as a four-year-old refugee in the 1980s,” he said.
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