Antonio Asis

Vibration carrés bleus et jaunes

2010

Since the 1940s, the Egyptian painter Hamed Abdalla is not only a visionary pioneer of modern art for the global south and Arab countries; he is also one of the first of his generation to envision painting as political art and activism. The current display focuses on a specific time of defeat and disillusion for a whole generation of Arab artists and intellectuals, in the aftermath of the “Six Days War” led by Israel and their allies (a war title which a lot of Arab activists consider propagandist, preferring to call it “The Defeat of 1967” or simply the “June 1967 War”). This persistent ideological wound became the symbol of failed dreams for the “Arab Nation” or Arab states alliances – including the short but emblematic Egyptian-Syrian achievement of the United Arab Republic. Another major failure, to which Abdalla will respond through the paintings on display here, is the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat program of “opening up” (Infitah) the Egyptian economy and give way to political compromise with the US and Israel – Abdalla assimilating this period to a vast state of Coma for all Arab people and territories. In a collective statement by a group of Egyptian artists exiled in Paris (including Abdalla), published in the Egyptian local journal Al-Dustur, on 5 December 1977, one can read: “This disaster is far greater than the defeat of June 1967. Rather, it approaches the scale of the disaster that took place in 1948 (…) To destroy the Arab people’s noble three decades-long struggle against imperialism and Zionism (…) Sadat is exploiting the stifling economic crisis that Egypt is currently facing (…) We must resist this betrayal of our nation or be crushed under the wheels of global imperialism for generations to come.” The works presented here reflect Abdalla’s transformation of the Hurrufiyyah aesthetics, to achieve his own way of “Arab Letterism”. It claims for a deeply experimental, non-decorative, politically committed and non-commercial use of the Arabic letter...

Born to an Italian family in 1915 in La Plata, a province of Buenos Aires, Luis Tomasello's first work experience was with his father, a bricklayer, carpenter, and painter. As a teenager, he began his artistic studies by taking evening drawing classes before joining the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes Prilidiano Pueyrredón in Buenos Aires from 1932 to 1938. Two years later, he enrolled at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes Ernesto de la Cárcova, where he studied until 1944. In the mid-1940s, young artists in Buenos Aires were challenging representational traditions in art; Tomasello met painters Emilio...

Antonio Asis was born in 1932 in Buenos Airs, Argentina. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, from where he obtained his doctorate degree in 1950. In 1956, he travel...

Mobile reliefs with moving patterns operated by motors that alter space-colour ratios, initially in black and white and later colour. Very slowly, the parts changed, were separated a...

Since the 1940s, the Egyptian painter Hamed Abdalla is not only a visionary pioneer of modern art for the global south and Arab countries; he is also one of the first of his generati...

B. Yaghi is a Lebanese contemporary artist born in 1984. Having lived in several countries, B. Yaghi soaked up the rich cultures of Beirut, London, Miami and Dubai, and was immersed ...

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Acrylic Paint on Canvas

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