Galerie Claude Lemand

DUBAI - Art Dubai Modern 2015 - 16-21 March 2015 - Booth M7 - Claude Lemand Gallery.

SHAFIC ABBOUD + ABDALLAH BENANTEUR

1. Shafic Abboud (Lebanese, 1926-2004).
Historic mas­ter­pieces from European pri­vate col­lec­tions.
‘Shafic Abboud is one of the fore­most Arab Artists of the 20th cen­tury. His paint­ings are a man­i­festo for freedom, colour and light, as well as being a per­ma­nent bridge between the art of Europe and the Middle East. He was very attached to Lebanon, to its land­scapes, its light and his own child­hood mem­o­ries. He was from a Lebanese Arab Modern cul­ture, strongly influ­enced by the sto­ries of his grand­mother, the paint­ings of the trav­el­ling story-tellers and by the Byzantine icons. The writ­ings of the Arab Nahda were to later have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on his intel­lec­tual edu­ca­tion. He played in Lebanon, before 1976 and after 1993, a major role for Beirut’s cul­tural and artistic life. (…). His mature works are ‘trans­fig­u­ra­tive’, because of Abboud’s search for a syn­thesis between his fairy-tale like child­hood world and his tech­nical mas­tering of abstract Parisian painting. He trans­fig­ured images fil­tered from his memory into painting, such as his series of Destroyed Cafés of 1990. (…).’ (Claude Lemand, Paris 2011)

Claude Lemand held 15 solo shows of works from dif­ferent periods and aspects of his Art, wrote anal­ysis on his per­son­ality, works and influ­ence, pub­lished his Monograph in 2006, curated his Retrospective in 2011 in Paris, at the Institut du Monde Arabe and pub­lished the Catalogue. In 2012, ini­ti­ated his Retrospective in the Beirut Exhibition Center.

2. Abdallah Benanteur (Algerian, born 1931).
Paintings from 1982 to 1992.
‘Born in 1931 in Mostaganem (Algeria), Abdallah Benanteur was brought up in an Algerian family and cul­tural envi­ron­ment, specif­i­cally enthralled by writing and illu­mi­nated manuscripts, by mystic Muslim poetry, by Andalusian music and songs. Throughout his ado­les­cence, he shared a pas­sion for the poetic illu­mi­na­tions of Al-Hallaj, Ibn Arabi, Omar Khayyam and Saadi, as well as for Cézanne’s visual and con­struc­tive order, whose influ­ence he dis­cov­ered in books of repro­duc­tions. (…). In 1953, he set­tled down in Paris, which he trans­formed into his own cap­ital of life and cre­ativity. Visiting museums in France and Europe, he assim­i­lated the mas­ter­pieces of the great mas­ters, and he man­aged to create his own per­sonal œuvre, pro­ducing lyrical land­scapes infused with the light of his Mediterranean home­land and that of his adopted Brittany, land­scapes that are some­times abstract or dotted with sil­hou­ettes of people walking.’ (Claude Lemand, 2005)

Claude Lemand held 22 solo shows ded­i­cated to Abdallah Benanteur, of works from dif­ferent periods and aspects of his Art, wrote anal­ysis on his per­son­ality and works and pub­lished his Monograph in 2 vol­umes.