Rebbe – Large

Description:

This is the new edition of the famed “Bussi-LeGanni Portrait” of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, Shlita. The original version, referred to as the “Shechinah Portrait,” was created by Michel in 1982 in honor of the Rebbe’s 80^th birthday.  The entire background is composed of over 12,000 letters of the Rebbe’s renowned oration, “Bussi-LeGanni,” or his “inaugural speech.”

This new print edition, in beautiful color, commemorated the Rebbe’s 50^th anniversary as leader of Chabad worldwide.  Each litho is meticulously created on museum quality paper with gold embossed paragraph headings.  The prints are sold in two sizes, unframed.

This is the larger print.  For the smaller size, CLICK HERE.

“The Inside Story”

The Shechinah Curiosity

The Rebbe’s 80^th Birthday Portrait was created in stages.  I first wrote out the entire Maamar, from beginning to end as a background.  I used my own designed Hebrew alphabet, in outline, to form a dense grid of letters, upon which I proceeded to create the Rebbe’s likeness, placing his rough pencil sketch onto the background at random.

The portrait was accomplished by shading the individual letters in degrees of grays and blacks, through “stippling” approximately a million dots, skillfully placed next to each other to form the desired affect.

At one point, bleary eyed and exhausted, after having worked through the night, I was touching up a nuance in the Rebbe’s right eye when I noticed that the word “Shechinah” appeared directly on his eye.  Curiosity urged me to look to the left eye, and there too the word “Shechinah” fell.

With excitement and anticipation my eyes traveled once more, and this time I noticed that directly above the Rebbe’s eyes, centered on his forehead was, again, the word “Shechinah.”  All of these word placements were accidental… or perhaps not.