Uri Lifshitz was born in 1936 at Kibbutz Givat Hashlosha, Israel.  He gained recognition in 1963 at the Tenth New Horizons exhibit. Lifshitz  transitioned  from the abstract to new figuration with  an inclination to pop.
Lifshitz lived in Spain where he developed an affinity for Spanish painters from Velazquez and Goya to Picasso. Baroque imagery commonly appears in Lifshitz's paintings. He is notorious for his incorporation of high and low, of the sublime and the vulgar. The presence in Lifshitz's paintings of kitsch and decorativeness accompanying scenes with baroque angels, and doll-like children are superimposed in tragic painful scenes overshadowed expressively with torture and humiliation.
Since the mid-seventies Lifshitz work is primarily hyper-realistic, the naturalistic elements in his painting replacing the expressive aggression overriding his earlier works.