Category: MIDDLE EASTERN ART
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01 Work, Middle East Artists, Lalla Essaydi’s Harem #7, with Footnotes, #67
“Traditionally, the presence of men defines public spaces: streets, meeting places, you, the workplaces,” writes Essaydi. “Women, on the other hand, have been confined to private spaces, to the architecture of homes. In my photographs, I restrict women to these spaces, their spaces clean, partitioned off by walls and controlled by men” -Lalla Essaydi More on…
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01 Painting, MODERN & CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EASTERN ART, Shakir Hassan Al-Said’s UNTITLED (TOWN), with Footnotes – #5E
Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925–2004), an Iraqi painter, sculptor and writer, is considered one of Iraq’s most innovative and influential artists. Born in Samawa, Al Said lived, worked and died in Bagdad. In 1948 he received a degree in social science from the Higher Institute of Teachers in Baghdad and in 1954 a diploma in…
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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Louai Kayyali’s Then What, with Footnotes, #66
In Kayyali’s work eleven figures (seven women, two boys and one man) are crowded together as though walking in unison. With most of their gazes turned away from the viewer, they are lost in the suggested horror of their surroundings as several peer up at an invisible, looming force. In the center of the canvas…
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01 Painting, MIDDLE EASTERN ART, Safwan Dahoul’s UNTITLED, with Footnotes – #5B
Safwan Dahoul was born in 1961 in Hama, Syria, Dahoul was initially trained by leading modernists at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus before travelling to Belgium, where he earned a doctorate from the Higher Institute of Plastic Arts in Mons. Upon returning to Syria, he began teaching at the Faculty of Fine Arts…
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02 Paintings, Middle East Artists, Louay Kayyali’s Maaloula, with Footnotes, #65
Maaloula is one of the main subjects in Kayyali’s oeuvre; the present work is painted only two years after the artist graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti and it is one of the finest portrayals of this mountainous Aramaic town. All elements are intricately balanced, orchestrated by his ability in articulating the subtleties of…
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01 Painting, MODERN & CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EASTERN ART, Adham Wanly’s HUNGARIAN HORSE AT THE CIRCUS, with Footnotes – #5D
I couldn’t find the horse either!Adham Wanly (1908 in Alexandria, Egypt – 1959) was a painter who learnt in the atelier of the Italian Otorino Becchi 1932, then set up his own atelier with his brother Seif Wanly (above), and participated in many local and international exhibition specially Venice, São Paulo (Brasil), Alexandria Biennale. The Museum…
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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Louai Kayyali,’s The match Seller, with Footnotes, #64
Louay Kayali, (1934–1978) was a Syrian modern artist. Kayali was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1934 and studied art in the Accademia di Belle Arti after having studied at the Al-Tajhiz School where his work was first exhibited in 1952. He met Syrian artist Wahbi Al-Hariri there and the two would share a friendship for the…
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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Easam Darawshi’s Expressive Portrait #2, with Footnotes, #63
Essam Darawshi was born in Nazareth in 1984. He studied Physiotherapy at the Faculty of Medicine at Genoa University, Italy. In 2010, Easam enrolled in the Academy of Arts at the University of Genoa where he began his journey as an artist, driven by his passion, focusing on the Arabic Calligraphy as a form of contemporary…
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02 Paintings, Middle East Artists, Rafat Asad’s Haifa, with Footnotes, #62
Haifa is the third-largest city in Israel — after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv — with a population of 285,316 in 2019. The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area in Israel. Over the millennia, the Haifa area has changed hands: being conquered and ruled by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Israelites, Phoenicians,…
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01 Painting, MODERN & CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EASTERN ART, Hassan Hajjaj’s WINK, with Footnotes – #5A
Hassan Hajjaj (born Larache, Morocco in 1961) is a contemporary artist who lives and works between London, UK and Marrakech, Morocco. Hajjaj’s work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the British Museum, London; the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC; the Newark Museum, New Jersey; Los Angeles County Museum of…
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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Hussein Bikar’s THE LANDLORD with Footnotes, #57
Hussein Amin Bicar (2 January 1913 in Alexandria – 16 November 2003) was one of Egypt’s most prominent artists of the 20th century, after graduating from the Cairo higher school of fine arts in 1934, he spent more than 60 years of his life teaching art at schools and universities and then through the press, he…
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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Shakir Hassan Al-Said’s Untitled (Town), with Footnotes, #55
Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925–2004), an Iraqi painter, sculptor and writer, is considered one of Iraq’s most innovative and influential artists.Born in Samawa, Al Said lived, worked and died in Bagdad. In 1948 he received a degree in social science from the Higher Institute of Teachers in Baghdad and in 1954 a diploma in painting…
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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Abdelaziz Gorgi’s CHKOBA PLAYERS; EVE OF RAMADAN, with Footnotes, #52
The chkobba is a card game drawn from the scopa and brought to Tunisia by Italian migrants. It is played with traditional cards . The game is between two players or two teams of two players most often but it is possible, although infrequent, to play three or four independent players. Depending on the regions, provinces…
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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Adham Wanly’s Le monastère copte, désert de Mariut/ The Coptic Monastery, Mariut Desert, with Footnotes, #56
The late Pope Kyrillos VI established this Coptic Orthodox monastery in 1959 in commemoration of Saint Mina (Menas), his patron saint, in an isolated desert area very close to the archaeological site and historical city of Abu Mena in Mariut, near Alexandria, Egypt. Abu Mena is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and was once an…
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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Ibrahim El Dessouki’s The Seventh Day, with Footnotes, #51
El Dessouki’s triptych of seven majestic, goddess-like women are incarnations of the Egyptian goddess of motherhood, Hathor, in her human, as opposed to bovine form. The painting derives its name from Egyptian tradition, inherited from ancient times, ‘El Sebou’ or ‘The Seventh Day’. The ritual is a seven-day celebration upon the birth of a child;…
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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Ibrahim El Dessouki’s Doors and False Doors 5,, with Footnotes, #50
“False doors”, also known as “Ka doors”, as they allowed the Ka (an element of the “soul”) to pass through them, were common in the mortuary temples and tombs of ancient Egypt from around the Third Dynasty and temples of the New Kingdom. The false door was thought to be a threshold between the world…
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03 Paintings, Middle East Artists, Paul Guiragossian’s Femmes en Conversation, with Footnotes, #49
Paul Guiragossian (1926 — November 20, 1993) was an Armenian Lebanese painter. Born to Armenian parents, Paul Guiragossian experienced the consequences of exile from a very tender age. Raised in boarding schools, he grew up away from his mother who had to work to make sure her two sons got an education… Please follow link for full…
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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Nabil Nahas’s COLOR BLIND, with Footnotes, #53
Lebanese artist Nabil Nahas has firmly established himself as a pioneer of abstraction through his unique use of color, texture and complex composition to create spellbinding canvases. Nahas received his MFA from Yale University in 1973, and although formally trained in Western painting, his work is inspired by a multiplicity of sources including nature and the geometric…
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02 Paintings, Middle East Artists, Paul Guiragossian’s Mother and Child in Mandorla, with Footnotes, #48
Child in Mandorla by Modern master Paul Guiragossian represents the artist’s quest to find harmony in both his works and his life. Seeking a balance between an expressionist touch that references reality and chromatic elements that express emotional movement and a new reality, the present work shows a deep precision in his brushstroke and composition,…
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02 Paintings, Middle East Artists, Nasser Ovissi’s Thorses, with Footnotes, #47
Nasser Ovissi is an American-Iranian painter whose work is characterized by stylized figures of Arabic women and horses. Set amidst geometric patterns and decorative elements, his figures seem to merge into and out of the space behind them. “My work is dedicated to the beauty of life and I hope those who experience my work…
Zaidan Gallery 