Tag: Middle East
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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;…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Hossein Kazemi’s Tar Player, with Footnotes, #46
A Tar is an Iranian long-necked string instrument, waisted lute family instrument, used by many cultures. This is in accordance with a practice common in Persian-speaking areas of distinguishing lutes on the basis of the number of strings originally employed. More on a TarA leading and pioneer Iranian Modern artist, Hossein Kazemi moved away from the…
-
01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Ghasem Hajizadeh’s Yesterday-Today, with Footnotes, #45
Yesterday-Today is an enigmatic work that is representative of the artist’s signature style. One of the most sought after artists within Tehran’s high society since the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hajizadeh is known for his compositions that bring together his memories of the past with his inspirations from the contemporary popular culture. Throughout his…
-
01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Ghazi Saudi, with Footnotes, #44
“The city of Ghazi al Saudi , today’s Baghdad, is the actual place implanted in a time that goes back some eight hundred years. Al Wasiti’s illustrations of Maqamat al Hariri have been a constant inspiration for him, not only in his smaller canvases and ceramics, but also in his large frescoes, where he employs…
-
01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Boutros al-Maari’s Antar and Abla, with Footnotes, #59
Antarah ibn Shaddad al-Absi (525–608), also known as Antar, was a pre-Islamic Arab knight and poet, famous for both his poetry and his adventurous life. Stories of his heroic exploits have been circulating for centuries and were eventually written down in the eighth century. Set in pagan Arabia known as the jahiliya, “before the time of the…
-
01 Photograph, Middle East Artists, Tarek Al-Ghoussein’s Al-Wihdat Refugee Camp, with Footnotes, #35
Tarek Al-Ghoussein was born in Kuwait, his grandparents were Palestinian exiles who were unable to visit their native home. His father, Talat Al-Ghoussein, was a journalist, editor and a diplomat who served as the Kuwait ambassador to the United States in the 1960s. His family moved a lot during his childhood between Kuwait, United States, Morocco…
-
01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Jellal Ben Abdallah’s LA MUSICIENNE, with Footnotes, #61
Jellal Ben Abdallah, Tunisia (1921 – 2017) enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts de Tunis but stayed only three weeks. After winning the first prize in painting and receiving a scholarship, he moved to Paris for three months in 1949. In Paris, Ben Abdallah joined the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse district and also…
-
01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Nasser Ovissi’s Rakhsh and the Simorgh, with Footnotes, #60
Rakhsh (“luminous”) is the stallion of protagonist Rostam in the Persian national epic, Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. The color of Rakhsh is described as “rose leaves that have been scattered upon a saffron ground” and it is first noticed by Rostam amongst the herds of horses brought over from Zabulistan and Kabul. In this first encounter Rakhsh…
-
01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Fahrelnissa Zeid’s Metropolis, ith Footnotes, #42
Fahrelnissa Zeid (7 January 1901 – 5 September 1991) was a Turkish artist best known for her large-scale abstract paintings with kaleidoscopic patterns. Also using drawings, lithographs, and sculptures, her work blended elements of Islamic and Byzantine art with abstraction and other influences from the West. Zeid was one of the first women to go to…
-
01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Louai Kayyali’s UNTITLED (LADY), with Footnotes, #61
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…
Zaidan Gallery 