THE ARMORY SHOW 2015 - DIA AL-AZZAWI + SHAFIC ABBOUD - Booth 630.

From 4 March to 27 April 2015 - NEW YORK, The Armory Show, 4-8 March 2015.

  • AZZAWI, Gilgamesh 2.

    Gilgamesh 2, 1987. Mixed media on paper laid down on canvas, 160 x 120 cm. Donation Claude & France Lemand. Museum, Institut du monde arabe, Paris. © Dia Al-Azzawi. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

  • Abboud, Gentilly, rue du Souvenir.

    Gentilly, rue du Souvenir, 1966. Oil on canvas, 115 x 73 cm. Donation Claude & France Lemand. Museum, Institut du monde arabe, Paris. © Succession Shafic Abboud. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

  • Dia Al-Azzawi, The Wounded Soul Triptych

    The Wounded Soul Triptych, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 450 cm. Private Collection. © Dia Al-Azzawi. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

  • ABBOUD, Image de juillet n°1

    Image de Juillet n°1, 1970. Oil on canvas, 130 x 130 cm. © The Estate of Shafic Abboud. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

NEW YORK - The Armory Show 2015 - 4-8 March 2015 - FOCUS - Booth 630 - Claude Lemand Gallery.

SHAFIC ABBOUD + DIA AL-AZZAWI

1. Shafic Abboud (Lebanese, 1926-2004).
Historic mas­ter­pieces from European pri­vate col­lec­tions.
Claude Lemand. ‘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, he ini­ti­ated his Retrospective in the Beirut Exhibition Center.

2. Dia Al-Azzawi (Baghdad, born 1939).
Dia Al-Azzawi was a close young friend of Shafic Abboud, and his sup­porter during the 1980s and the 1990s. They met many times in Abboud’s studio in Paris, had group exhi­bi­tions in Paris, London and Beirut, and par­tic­i­pated in solo and group exhi­bi­tions in Galerie Faris (1983-1991) and then in my gallery (since 1995).

Dia Al-Azzawi is one of my gallery’s Modern Arab major Artists since November 1994. I hold in my gallery and in French Museums, Institutions and Fairs solo and group exhi­bi­tions of his works. My gallery pro­duced some of his orig­inal books, port­fo­lios of prints and 4 sculp­tures in bronze, including the mon­u­mental Desert Flower, 2008, now in the Mathaf Doha col­lec­tions.

My gallery was the first person to show in the West Dia Al-Azzawi’s Sabra and Shatila Massacres, 1982-83. It was in 2003 in Aix-en-Provence, an Homage to the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. This Polyptych is now in The Tate Modern col­lec­tions.
In 2013, I showed in Paris Grand Palais his first his­toric mas­ter­piece Al-Mu’allaqat (The Golden Odes, London, 1978) and his mag­nif­i­cent his­tor­ical Triptych Bilad Al-Sawad, 1994-1995, illus­trated with other works and com­mented in the Catalogue I pub­lished in 2013.

Dia Al-Azzawi. ‘ My work is part of the Renaissance of Arab Art trend, yet it is uni­versal in its dimen­sion and inter­locked within con­tem­po­rary his­tory and cul­ture.’

Claude Lemand. ‘ His impor­tant Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Books and Prints are inspired by the Nature, Culture and History of Iraq and the Arab World, in a pos­i­tive and modern vision of Art and Life. Part of his oeuvre is tragic and shows Picasso’s influ­ence in Azzawi’s works inspired by the slaugh­ters and other vio­lent events raging through the Middle East since decades, and the other part is wit­nessing the impact of Matisse in his more joyful and colourful works that depict the ‘joie de vivre’ in the Desert and in the Oriental Gardens of the Arab Civilisation in its opu­lent periods.’

Copyright © Galerie Claude Lemand 2012.

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