"I, his daughter, temporary name"
Irit Dallal Zalayet
"What will you do with all my paintings when I'm not here?"
His question caught me off guard. I was fifty years old at the time, a nurse in an emergency room, emotionally and mentally distant from him. I was forbidden from entering his studio, the door there had been locked for as long as I can remember. I loved every one of his paintings. He called them "my sons" and his eyes sparkled whenever he spoke of them. He never spoke of me, his only daughter, that way.
When he asked what I would do with all his paintings after he died, I felt like a door had opened. It was the first time he had spoken to me directly about his paintings. He was eighty-three at the time.
I decided to open a gallery for him, in his home, and that's where I first discovered myself. I returned home.
This is what is written on the back cover of the book that documents the long, moving, and sometimes painful process that ended with the establishment of the gallery that presents solo exhibitions by my father and guest artists.
