Gabriel Cohen was born in Paris in 1933 to Jerusalemite parents temporarily relocated to Europe. The family survived World War II in hiding in France, and returned to Jerusalem in 1949. In 1964 he began working as guard for a small diamond polishing business in Jerusalem, where, in 1972, he began painting at nights.

- The discovery -
Ruth Debel saw him sitting on Jerusalem's King George Street, presenting his paintings (on cardboard) on the sidewalk. That day she purchased The Thief of Baghdad, the f irst painting he ever sold. Later that year, in the Fall of 1973, when she opened Debel Gallery in Ein Kerem, Cohen became one of the Gallery artists, whom Debel represented exclusively for ten years.

 - The work -
Gabriel Cohen depicted historical f igures, scenes from legends and stories, or entirely from his imagination. He was drawn to such celebrated f igures as Napoleon, Rasputin, Muhammad Ali, and Cleopatra, and often portrayed large, voluptuous, seductive and even intimidating women. Both attest to internal conf licts of identity and self def inition, charging his paintings with a psychological dimension. His works fuse different places and times, especially his "world paintings," which juxtapose Paris, the Egyptian pyramids, and New York's skyscrapers in a single canvas. In some respects, Cohen is a folk artist: both in the choice of legendary heroes or f igures such as the Tarot reader, and in his work on glass, which continues a 19th century tradition of Eretz-Israeli folk painting.