Yaacov Agam (Gipstein), Israel painter, one of the pioneers of optic and contemporary kinetic art. Agam, the son of a rabbi, was born in Rishon le-Zion. He studied painting at the Bezalel School in Jerusalem and at the Academy of Abstract Art in Paris. In 1952 he began pictorial researches into third dimension and movement in painting, which earned him first international prize for artistic research at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1963. His first one-man show was held in Paris in 1953. The point of departure of Agam's work can be found in the idea of escaping from the arrested nature of a work of art in space and introducing the time dimension. He achieves this by creating relief pictures, whose movable constituent parts can be changed either by moving the picture or by the movement of the spectator. Agam later extended this theme into other fields. In 1958, he developed a process of writing in which words are superimposed on one another, enabling the reader to grasp several ideas at the same time. He produced films (1956–57) dealing with his work and the effect of movement in painting. Agam founded an experimental theater (1959–62) in which four scenes were acted simultaneously on four stages surrounding the audience. He created objects which established a relationship between sound and light (1962–67) and sculpture (1966–67). He also designed a large work, "Jacob's Ladder," for the Binyanei ha-Ummah building in Jerusalem.