Alexander Okun

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Alexander "Sasha" Okun (b. 1949) is an Israeli artist, author and educator. Okun's art is characterised for its reference to a classical baroque traditions, which he identifies as tragiccomedy in the tragicomic absurd perspective.

Ocun is a senior lecturer at Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem, where he has taught for morethan 30 years.Okun has been recognized internationally for this work. During the 1980s, he received the OferFeniger Award and scholarships from Gestetners and the International Centre for Arts Cité in Paris. He was named an Honorary Citizen of Jefferson County, Kentucky in 1989. In 2014, Okun received the Mordechai Ish Shalom prize for Achievements in Art.

Okun's works are represented in private collections in Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Poland, the Netherlands, Russia and the United States, as well as in museums in Russia, Israel and Austria. The most notable venues include Stieglitz State Art and Industry Academy, the Museum of the Non-conformist Art and the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg,Yad Vashem and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Albertina Museum & Art Gallery in Vienna, the Negev Museum in Be'er Sheva, the Janko Da-Da Museum in Ein Hod, the Illana Goor Museum in Jaffa, the Bar David Museum in Bar Am and the Tefen Open Museum inGalilee.

Along with his artistic activities, Okun also writes his own fiction and non-fiction, and translates from Hebrew into the Russian. His translation of Elie Wiesel's Souls on Fire was first published underground in 1979, and has been published three times since.

In 2002, Okun published The Book of Tasty and Healthy Life co-authored with famous poet Igor Guberman. He has also published Culinary Midrash (2000), Placebo (2007), Kamov and Kaminka, a novel (2015) and the Guide to the Country of the Elders of Zion (2009, with Igor Guberman).

In 2018, Okun's NF title In Love with a Pencil was released in Russia by SLOVO Publishers, followed by BTW About Art and Other Things in 2020.