Artist Michael Zavros has won the Archibald people’s choice award for his portrait of Jewish leader Alex Ryvchin, painted just weeks after the Bondi terror attack. The $5,000 prize was announced with a record 45,769 votes cast.
Inspired by leadership and likeness
Zavros said he was motivated by deep respect for Ryvchin, co-head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, and an uncanny resemblance between them. “A few years ago, my mother thought she saw me on TV, but it wasn’t, it was Alex,” Zavros said. “As a natural leader, he spoke with clarity and conviction about the grief within his community and the changes he feared were emerging in our nation.”
Symbolism in the painting
The artwork, titled Alex with his tefillin in the sea, was created after the two met at a beach in Sydney’s east in early January. “I wanted to paint him in water, or the sea, which carries so much rich symbolism,” the artist said. The painting includes a tefillin, a small black leather box with straps containing Torah verses. Zavros noted that cultural symbols can express faith and belonging but are often used to divide.
Ryvchin explained the tefillin’s personal significance: “It’s something that binds Jewish people to thousands of years of custom, it binds us to our almighty, and for me personally, binds me to someone who was very dear to me, someone who I lost at Bondi. Every time I would see him, without fail, we would do tefillin together and in the moments before he was killed … I’m sure at this moment he’s smiling at what he’s seeing.”
Zavros’s heritage and reflections
A couple of years ago, Zavros took a DNA test and discovered Ashkenazi Jewish heritage alongside his Greek and Irish ancestry. “It’s worth reminding ourselves how fortunate we are to live in this great Western liberal democracy that welcomed my family from Cyprus in the 1950s, and welcomed Alex who arrived from the Ukraine as a four-year-old refugee in the 1980s,” he said.
Other Archibald prize winners
The $100,000 Archibald prize was won by Richard Lewer for his portrait of artist Iluwanti Ken. Self-taught artist Sean Layh won the $3,000 packing room prize for his portrait of actor Jacob Collins. The Wynne prize for landscape painting went to Gaypalani Waṉambi for The Waṉambi tree, and the Sulman prize to Lucy Culliton for Toolah, a painting of one of her greyhounds. A record 2,524 entries were received across all three prizes.
The Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2026 exhibition is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales until 16 August, before the Archibald finalists tour regional Victoria and New South Wales.
