Middle East - Abstract Paintings

Ben Abounassif was born in Caracas in 1964 to Lebanese parents. He graduated from Tennessee Tech University in 1987 with a B.A. in Business Management. Abounassif's first contact working in the art world was in 2006 when he launched Leiter Gallery in Miami, a short but successful experience as a co-owner working along with Cuban-born, Miami-based artist Sinuhe Vega Leiter, and Venezuelan-born internationalist & journalist, Jesus Rojas Torres. Abounassif's innate creativity was highly influenced by working closely with local artists and by visiting their studios and launching exhibitions at Leiter's, the only gallery in the U.S. that paid a living tribute to the late Cuban musician, Israel “Cachao" López. A year later in 2007, Abounassif exhibited his first art cube on Photo Miami '07 with Hardcore Contemporary Art in Wynwood. In 2008, Miami art dealer...

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 ...

Unique artwork Tanc is one of the most promising artists of his generation. Born in Paris on May 11, 1979, lives and works in Paris. Tanc's work bears the clear influence of abstract expressionist artists (the artist talks about Rothko, Pollock, Reinhardt, Hartung and especially Franz Kline are sources of inspiration in his practice). Tanc's practice reached a turning point: ever since his New York show at Catherine Ahnell Gallery, the artist left aside the colorful explosion that used to mark his paintings and is now more interested in nuances of black, lineary variations and automatic writing...

About L' Atlas - Street Art and Optical Art Movement: One of the most promising artists of his generation, L' ATLAS overturns codes, bringing the street into galleries and museums. 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 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...

"Garden of Eden" Abstract Painting 55" x 55" inch by Lana Khayat Work on paper and framed in glass. ABOUT: Lana Khayat is a Lebanese artist, currently b...