Dov Heller was born in 1937 in Romania.
He immigrated to Israel at age 12 and at age 18 he joined Kibbutz Nirim in the western Negev, where he lives today.His art studies began in 1962 at the Avni Institute and between 1968-1972 he studied at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.
Heller taught for twenty years at the Bezalel Academy and founded the Kibbutz Printing Workshop of Tel Aviv.
Heller is an intricate artist who uses various methods; Painting, printmaking, sculpture and installation to comment on the reality of contradictions in life; the Kibbutz and the city, the periphery and the center, agriculture and art. Heller’s socio-political consciousness dictates his styles and different means of expression in his work.
In 1979-1980 he created, together with Yaakov Hefetz from Kibbutz Eilon in the north, the project “Rainfall Region”, which dealt with comparing between the option of farming in the arid Negev and doing so in the more rainy north. The piece in Mitzpe Ramon is the continuation of the study of the issue.
Heller has created many art projects and participated in numerous group exhibitions over the years. In 1993, the historian and researcher Gideon Efrat wrote the book ‘Dov Heller: 50 projects’, which demonstrates Heller’s artistic affluence.
Dov Heller placed 18 large flat stones on the hillside leading down to the cliff, forming a diagonal paved surface.
On some of the stones, Heller carved small concaves that create a coarse surface.
The artist’s intention was to create crevices to absorb rainwater, together with sand blown by the wind, thus creating fertile soil in each hole to grow plants, which would germinate from seeds carried by the wind.
The mission however was designated to fail, also according to Heller himself. The work is in fact an act of poetic art, which relates to the aridity of the desert and man’s attempt to revive it and survive in it, despite its harsh conditions.
The stones face upwards, toward the sky, in hope that it will open and the prayers of he who put them there shall be answered.
Of course, to this day, no seed has settled in the small, carved cisterns chiseled by the artist. Maybe the struggle against nature is too big. Maybe there is no one in the sky to hear man’s prayers.
