Paul Guiragossian

Retrouvailles

1983

Milton Avery, in full Milton Clark Avery, (born March 7, 1893, Altmar, New York, U.S.—died January 3, 1965, New York City), painter noted in his lat...

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...

Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the ...

Née au Liban en 1953, Fatima El-Hajj a obtenu en 1978 son diplôme à l’Institut des Beaux-arts de l’Université Libanaise, puis celui de l’Académie des Beaux-arts de Leningrad et enfin...

Sara Shamma is a renowned painter whose works can be found in both public and private collections around the globe. Shamma was born in Damascus, Syria (1975) to a Syrian father and L...

Fatima El-Hajj, born in Lebanon in 1953, graduated from the Lebanese University’s Fine Arts Institution, the completed a second degree at the Leningrad Fine Arts Academy, and finally...

For Julia Kiryanova, painting is a dialogue – a dialogue which she beautifully facilitates, layering her work with various techniques. At the heart of much of her work an inherent fascination for people lies, intimately displaying abandoned figures seemingly floating in an abstract dream world, where time has stopped everything, but them. Julia Kiryanova has exhibited work at Amsterdam museum, Museum Op Solder and The Holocaust Museum...

Surrealistic abstract figurative painting paying homage to Picasso. Bright and vivid colors. Provenance only artist collection to gallery inventory. Hand-signed by the Artist. Certif...

In several mystical traditions, there are common elements that are needed for spiritual metamorphosis and transitions to another, transcendent dimension. In Sufism, there is also an inner dimension to the law that has to do with repentance, the abasement of desire, and discipline of the self, or the elimination of the ego. Transparent figures emphasize the inner world of pure innocence which is the prototype human being, pure consciousness, one's true identity, to be contrasted with the material human who is bound by one's senses and materialism. Materialism is shown by also patterns in the paintings. The two different layers are against each other in a contradictory way. Feeling the need to go deeper into this inner, imaginative world, I began to set artworks from the past in less familiar contexts such as seas or patterns and combine the figure with them where they seemed to become like elements in some greater dream. With her small paper works, Ece Gauer...

In several mystical traditions, there are common elements that are needed for spiritual metamorphosis and transitions to another, transcendent dimension. In Sufism, there is also an inner dimension to the law that has to do with repentance, the abasement of desire, and discipline of the self, or the elimination of the ego. Transparent figures emphasize the inner world of pure innocence which is the prototype human being, pure consciousness, one's true identity, to be contrasted with the material human who is bound by one's senses and materialism. Materialism is shown by also patterns in the paintings. The two different layers are against each other in a contradictory way. Feeling the need to go deeper into this inner, imaginative world, I began to set artworks from the past in less familiar contexts such as seas or patterns and combine the figure with them where they seemed to become like elements in some greater dream. With her small paper works, Ece Gauer...

In several mystical traditions, there are common elements that are needed for spiritual metamorphosis and transitions to another, transcendent dimension. In Sufism, there is also an ...

After touring Europe on a motorcycle, he arrived in Berlin in 2012, where he won a residence for artists with a pictorial series on massification and nihilism. In 2014 he was invited for a residence in Colombia, and subsequently he has travelled to Mexico, Guatemala and Cuba. The experience of Central America affects his painting so much that it becomes gestural and dominated by strong and bright colors. Contact with indigenous communities contributed to the formation of his thought and poetics, which suggests accessing an irrational dimension that cannot be explored through science and technology.