Hava TalTal
Though admittedly imperfect, TalTal recalls her native village as a charming, rustic setting carrying the perpetual aroma of wet biscuits, lavender, and manure. The stirrings of art came late. As a child Hava TalTal was interested in what most of les jeunes filles en fleurs were interested in – The Beatles. Giving over to fantasies of a glamorous, promiscuous life in the UK was more than a pastime for TalTal and her friends. It was a disease.
Most of her peers, after passing through early adolescence, made room for other interests, primarily face painting, blanket weaving, and marriage. Not so for Hava TalTal. Determined to see with her own eyes London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Berlin, she left home to study sculpture at Slade School of Fine Art.
She quickly attached herself to the Severed Ecologies Coöperative, the notorious arts collective known mostly for their loud disruptions of court proceedings and press conferences. She left London after twelve tumultuous years and settled in Crete with her 2-year-old daughter Yoko and her hairless terrier Spot.
In an interview with the German critic Verlag Döblin[1] TalTal was characteristically evasive describing her paintings as “Greek in their color, British in their cynicism, and American in their size.”
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