Nissan Engel was born in 1931 in Haifa, Israel. His training as an artist began at the Beaux-Arts Bezalel in Jerusalem; he later received a diploma from the Center Dramatique de l’Est in Strasbourg, France, for stage set and costume design. Engel moved in 1965 to New York, where he was influenced by Abstract Expressionism. He remained in the Big Apple for ten years before settling in Paris, France in 1975. He discovered his affinity for collage after working on a series of stained-glass windows in New York and Maryland, work that inspired him to create an intense block of color with painted collage elements. Musical themes are often his subject, as they give the work that sense of harmony and rhythm that distinguishes them. Nissan Engel passed away in Paris in 2016.

Pierre Restany wrote about him:
“Le peinture de Nissan Engel me frappe, parce que sans renier tout ce qui fait de la peinture un art sensuel, est avant tout un art de la tactique mentale, où l’image a une valeur, une organisation propre, et en plus, une rigueur et une rigueur presque morale.
A travers la tactique du langage, Nissan Engel arrive à crèer une image dans l’image; Engel, c’est un grand tempèrament pictural, avec l’intelligence d’un tacticien du langage et du langage de l’image.
C’est la double image, c’est l’au-delà de l’image, qu’il nous donne à voir, et à rever.”
“Nissan Engel’s painting strikes me because without denying everything which makes painting a sensual art, it remains primarily an art of mental strategy, where images have value, a specific organization, and, in addition, a rigor which is almost ethical.
Through the tactics of language, Nissan Engel succeeds in creating an image within an image. Engel is a great pictorial temperament, with the intelligence of a linguistic and pictorial strategist.
It is the double image, the beyond of the image, which he presents to us, to see and to dream.”

His works can be found in prestigious private and public collections, including:

Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, New York, USA
Bridgeston Museum, Tokyo, Giappone
The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, USA
Elf Atochem, Parigi, Francia
Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, California, USA
The Jewish Museum, New York City, New York, USA
Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
Museum of Art, State University of New York at Purchase, New York, USA
Schlumberger Foundation, Parigi, Francia
Weizman Institute, Rehovot, Israele
Niagra Falls Museum, Buffalo, New York, USA