A Franco-Israeli painter, Alec Borenstein was born in Syktyvkar, Russia, in 1942. In 1947, he arrived in Israel with his mother Paula, his father Meir, and his brother Itzhak. He married Walentyna Fastowska in Paris in 1965. Their son, born in 1969, is the composer Nimrod Borenstein. In September 2018, the City Hall of Paris’s 4th arrondissement exhibited Alec Borenstein’s works “Paris-Tel Aviv” as part of the France-Israel Year. In December 2004, the Maillol Museum in Paris exhibited his original drawings from the book “Jo Waijsblat, the Child of the Gas Chamber” (text by Gilles Lambert with a preface by Serge Klarsfeld and a foreword by Bertrand Lorquin, curator of the Maillol Museum). In 2001, his famous series “Freud, a Work, a Life” was exhibited at the International Congress of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society at La Grande Arche in La Défense. In 1985, he participated in the exhibition “From the Bible to the Present Day: 3,000 Years of Art” at the Grand Palais in Paris. In 1982, he participated in the exhibition “Works on Paper” at the ARC of the M.A.M. in Paris, in Villeparisis. In October 1981, he contributed to the special issue of “Cahiers Bernard Lazare” titled “Homage to Sadat.” On September 14, 1969, he painted a work in public during a television broadcast. Education: He began painting at the age of 6. On May 7, 1954, Tikwa Weinshtok devoted a lengthy article to him in the daily newspaper Maariv under the title “Child Prodigies.” On April 20, 1958, he received the Keren Sharett American-Israeli Cultural Foundation Award and studied in Professor Schwatzman’s studio and later at the Avni Institute in Tel Aviv under Marcel Janco (one of the founders of Dadaism). From 1964 to 1968, he studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Artistic Work: From 1958 to 1977, Alec Borenstein was part of the lyrical abstraction movement. His paintings from this period are striking for their use of deep blues, vivid reds, blacks, and flashes of white. Reuven Berman titled his article in the Jerusalem Post on September 14, 1964, “Bold Abstractions by Borenstein” to characterize this style of painting. During the years 1969–1972, the artist became interested in consumer society, and his works, though still abstract, began to approach Pop Art. The critic Myriam Tal referred to this as “sociological painting.” In 1978, Alec Borenstein began to develop a highly personal style of realism. The artist worked in series at that time. Each of these series is a set of variations on a visual or formal problem explored through either a non-anecdotal theme—such as his famous checkered tablecloths found in his “24 Caprices” (1989–1992)— “Women” (1998–2000), or an “anecdotal” theme such as the series dedicated to Freud (1994–1999). A new approach emerged during the years 2000–2018 with the “Auto-Recoveries” series. Here, realism is juxtaposed with abstract elements. The artist’s works are held in public and private collections in Israel, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the United States, Japan, and Australia.