Yizhak Elyashiv has lived and worked in Providence, Rhode Island since 1991. His best-known prints, which have been shown and collected by museums throughout the country, are records of physical activity in and out of the studio, “maps” of gestures and measurements undertaken in the landscape and on his printing plates.
Elyashiv's printmaking is recognized internationally, especially his Handful of Grains Map series, gridded expanses of up to eight by twelve feet in which the simple gesture of tossing grains of wheat is developed into expansive vistas of line and landscape. Elyashiv's work also ranges to an intimate scale, in which embossing and fine drypoint lines minimally evoke natural forms.
His prints have been exhibited and collected by the Israel Museum, the British Museum, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, among others.
Born in Jerusalem, Elyashiv received a BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem in 1990 and came to the United States to receive his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992. He began teaching at Rhode Island College in 1995, and has been a faculty of Rhode Island School of Design since 2001.