David Nipo was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1964, and immigrated to Israel in 1969. As an immigrant, the loneliness and lack of social life shaped him as a person who had to create a world for himself. At the age of five he decided he wanted to be a painter and embarked on a lifelong self-taught journey.

From 1983-1997 Nipo worked as a scenic artist for the Israeli film Industry. In 1997 he studied at the Jerusalem Studio School. In 2005, he and Aram Gershuni established the Hatahana Studio for Figurative Painting and Drawing in Tel Aviv. Nipo now lives and works in the Northen Negev of Israel.

His work is done mainly from life through acute observation, with subject matter including still life, landscape and portraiture. His works are in public and private collections internationally, including the Israel Museum. Nipo believes that art liberates by unveiling aspects of collective human truth that can only be revealed through a subjective point of view of the individual’s experience. Therefore, the practice of art is an ethical act that bears social responsibility.

Ecclesiastes is a portrait of Aram Gershuni, the artist’s longstanding friend and colleague. While the face is that of Aram, the protagonist (Ecclesiastes, who according to biblical research was around his sixth decade at the time) is the painter at that particular moment in his life at fifty-eight, looking from the vantage point of his age on his life. To his right is a flowering plant and to his left a skull.