This book was born from the friendship between words and colors. During a visit Avraham Balaban made to the Artists' House in Tel Aviv in 2020, an exhibition of a painter named Ami Shinar caught his attention. The paintings reflected a contemporary Tel Aviv urbanism, kicking but also caressing. A friendship that developed between the two resulted in joint wanderings in Tel Aviv, and these are described here - in the meeting between paintbrush and keyboard. The wanderings gave rise to several of the lists he published in white and an abundance of paintings and drawings that filled Shanar's workshop. These and these do not present the canonical image of Tel Aviv. It is true that here and there there is a glimpse of the city center and its boulevards, but mostly we are exposed to corners in the less glamorous neighborhoods of the city, where you can see refugees and migrant workers and crumbling houses in the shadow of towers occupying the skyline. Still, both Laban and Shaner offer an optimistic view in the book of Tel Aviv sketches, through which a love story for Tel Aviv is revealed. Avraham Laban, literary researcher, writer and poet, has been publishing a regular column in the Haaretz newspaper for about eight years called "Tel Aviv Lists". Ami Shanar, painter, architect and urban planner, has so far presented four solo exhibitions. The last one - "Tel Aviv Sketches" (November 2021) - was the beginning of this book.
