Avigdor Arikha | Israeli artist, 81

Avigdor Arikha, 81, an Israeli artist who learned the power of art as a boy during the Holocaust when he sketched scenes from a concentration camp onto salvaged scraps of paper, died of cancer Thursday at his home in Paris, where he had spent most of his adult life.

Mr. Arikha, a painter, draftsman, and printmaker, went on to become one of Israel's most important contemporary artists, imbuing his portraits and scenes of daily life - a red umbrella against a wall, an overflowing bookshelf, a jumble of bottles in a cabinet - with enigmatic, disconcerting beauty.

"He had an exceptional gift for capturing something deep in people and expressing their mystery," French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said.

Mr. Arikha, who abandoned abstract art for figurative work in the 1960s, was well-known for portraits of subjects including Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen Mother, actress Catherine Deneuve, and his close friend the writer Samuel Beckett. He also produced many probing portraits of himself and his wife, poet Anne Atik, who survives him.

Born in Romania, Mr. Arikha turned to drawing to cope when he was sent to a Ukrainian labor camp at age 12. Seventeen sketches survived the war: One showed a pile of corpses in a wagon and a naked woman's body being tossed into a grave.

The drawings came to the attention of the International Red Cross during a camp inspection. Soon afterward, Mr. Arikha was permitted to leave with a group of children already cleared for release, after he took the place and identity of a boy who had died, according to Duncan Thomson's biography, Arikha.

The artist's father died in the Holocaust, and his mother learned that her children were alive in Palestine only after the war. Newly free, Mr. Arikha lived on a kibbutz and fought in the war over Israel's creation, during which he was wounded in 1948. Recognizing his talent, supporters in Israel insisted he go to Paris to study and financed him.

Mr. Arikha's works are in permanent collections around the world, including the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. - AP