Calman Shemi was born in Agentina in 1939. He graduated from the School of Sculpture and Ceramics in Mendoza, where he was a student of the Italian-Argentinean sculptor, Libero Badii, and the German-Israeli sculptor, Rudi Lehman. In 1961 Shemi settled in Israel. There he worked as a sculptor with wood and clay. Several of his large-scale projects are situated in various public buildings all over the world.

Though sculpture dominated his early years as an artist, Shemi developed the idea of the “soft painting” medium in 1977. Beginning with a color drawing done to scale, Shemi layers irregularly shaped pieces of variously textured and color fabrics.

Between 1991 and 2003 Shemi executed artwork for eight of Carnival’s Cruise Liners. He created large paintings for public spaces and paintings for the cabins and suites. Calman Shemi’s “lacquer” and “window” paintings are reminiscent of ancient techniques used to create art in Japan and China centuries ago. During the last eighteen years Shemi has held more than seventy one-man-shows in the United States, Japan, Germany, Spain, France and Israel. Today Shemi’s artwork can be seen in many public spaces and private collections around the world.