Galerie Claude Lemand

SHAFIC ABBOUD, SEVEN MASTERPIECES, 1953-2003.

Emmanuel Daydé, Shafic Abboud, the prophet.

(...) Shafic Abboud’s paint­ings are ine­bri­ated with light, woven with colours like car­pets, enclosed like the Garden of Eden and rustling like Persian minia­tures, they appear as trans­fig­ured visions of an intan­gible reality. It seems that his entire oeuvre fol­lows some of the Bonnardian aspects of the joie de vivre, as is proven through the title of one of his paint­ings, Cette place pour le Bonheur (‘That space for hap­pi­ness’). Abboud remains a mys­tical believer of the moment, who is capable of sac­ri­ficing every­thing to this wild god. With his trou­bled nature, the Levantine artist des­per­ately fights against time that con­sumes us and against depres­sion that threatens him. He does this by making his can­vases flutter and vibrate with a fire that burns, warms up and con­sumes itself, using all sorts of yellow, orange and red colour vari­a­tions from the com­plex East. (...)
Translated from French by Valérie Hess.

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