A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST - Galerie Tanit

A GLIMPSE
INTO THE
PAST

Installation Shot . Galerie Tanit Beyrouth . 2020
Yvette Achkar . Hussein Madi . Paul Guiragossian . Huguette Caland

                     Installation Shot . Galerie Tanit Beyrouth . 2020
                         Helen Khal . Alfred Basbous . Farid Haddad

Yvette Achkar

                       Yvette Achkar . Untitled . 2011 . Mixed media on board . 41 x 33.5 cm

Yvette Achkar was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1928, and grew up in Lebanon. Achkar
graduated from ALBA in 1957, where she was under the influence of the Italian painter
Fernando Manetti and the French painter Georges Cyr, but it was during her stay in
Paris, on a scholarship of the French government that her artistic career took hold.

Upon her return to Lebanon, from 1966 to 1988, she taught painting at ALBA and
at the Institute of Fine Art, Lebanese University. Yvette Achkar participated in different
biennales (Baghdad, Alexandria, Paris, and Sao Paolo) since her graduation from
ALBA; she has been widely exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Lebanon,
Rome, Yugoslavia, Germany, and France.

Her work is best described in her own words: “Painting is like surfing, it is at the top
of the wave and then a moment later in the hollow. There is no fear in these hollows,
even when they never end. Instead, they balance the existence and release the artist’s
imagination.”

Georges Cyr

                                      Georges Cyr . Villequiers . 1925 . Oil on canvas . 45 x 55 cm

Georges Cyr was born in 1880, in Montgeron (Seine et Oise), in France. He started
his artistic career on the advice of the painter Guillaumin. As from 1924, Cyr was
exhibiting at the Salon des Independents in Paris. In 1934, following an unhappy
emotional experience, he decided to leave France and tour the Middle East and the
Far East. Having spent a few weeks in Beirut, he fell in love with the city and decided
to settle in Ain El Mraisse. His studio was so popular it was viewed by many as an art
school and it became the favorite meeting place of artists like Abboud, Kanaan, Onsi,
Aouad, Basbous and others.

Cyr held an important exhibition in the St. Georges Hotel in 1935. This was followed by
another at the Stade du Chayla, Beirut (1953). In 1965, Brigitte Shehadeh organized a
retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work at the Vendome Hotel in Beirut.
An entire room dedicated to the works of Georges Cyr can be seen in the Havre
Museum in France.
Cyr was awarded the Lebanese National Order of the Cedar.

Farid Haddad

                     Farid Haddad . Untitled #1 . 1971 . Gouache on paper . 46.5 x 36.5 cm

    Farid Haddad . Untitled #2 . 1973 . Gouache on Fabriano Castello paper . 51.5 x 32.5 cm

Farid Haddad, Born in Beirut in 1945, works and Lives in USA.

Artist and educator, earned a BA in Fine Arts from the American University of Beirut
and an MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
In 1972 he received a Fulbright-Hays grant to explore the practices of lithography
and embossing in New York City. In the mid-eighties he was the recipient of two
Individual Artist Grants from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. In the late
sixties Haddad was known primarily for his constructivist style and began exhibiting
black-and-white ink drawings characterized by their linear compositions, geometric
shapes, patterns and gradations.

Following this period, Haddad produced works based on both experimental and
spontaneous approaches to drawing and painting that were exhibited in Beirut at
Contact Art Gallery in 1972. After which, for about three years, he intensely focused
on Color Field works by exploiting the expressive use of abstraction and color, and
their relation to the landscape. In the late seventies and early eighties, Haddad
deepened his visual language by circling back to, and exploring additional aspects
of his experimental, spontaneous and gestural works with transitory qualities as a way
to convey immateriality.

Haddad had his first solo exhibition in 1971 at the John F. Kennedy American Center
in Beirut, and since has had twenty one-person exhibitions in Beirut, Lebanon (1972,
1973, 1975, 1992); Kuwait City, Kuwait (1972); Rome, Italy (1975, 1986); New York City,
New York, USA (1976, 1977, 1979, 1980); Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA (1977, 1978,
1979, 1981, 1983); Paris, France (1981); and Henniker, New Hampshire, USA (1993,
2007). He has participated in more than fifty group exhibitions in Europe, the Middle
East and North America.

Elie Kanaan

                                  Elie Kanaan . Untitled . Not dated . Aquarelle . 29 x 40 cm

Elie Kanaan born in Beirut 1926 - 2009, quickly became a self-educated and very
gifted painter, endow with a particular style. Already in his early twenties, he showed a
very clear way in expressing his own colors throughout his first oil-paintings. After that
his meeting with famous painters such as the French painter Georges Cyr, allowed
him to prove his talent. The colors are bright but deeply worked, the touches are
audacious but never outrageous.

He won in 1957 the first price in painting at the “Salon du Printemps”, as well as
the UNESCO’s price in 1958. This allowed him to get a fellowship to Paris where he
will consort the Free Academy of the Grande Chaumière. He became friends, at this
period, with Jacques Villon, Yves Alix, and many other known persons in this artistic
Parisian world.

Since 1962, many itinerant exhibitions were organized from Paris to New York, from
Sao Paolo to Belgrade, from Moscow to Alexandria. In 1967, Elie Kanaan was awarded
with the Prix Vendôme which devotes his recognition in Europe.

Alfred Basbous

Alfred Basbous . Works on paper . Untitled, 1980-1989 . Charcoal on paper . 37 x 14 cm each
     Alfred Basbous . Olive wood on black marble & Bronze sculptures . Variable dimensions

Alfred Basbous was born in Rachana, Lebanon in 1924. His first exhibition in Beirut,
at the Alecco Saab gallery in 1958, marked the beginning of a long and successful
career as a sculptor.

In 1960, he received a scholarship from the French government and became a
pupil of the sculptor René Collamarini at ‘The National Fine Arts School in Paris’
(L’Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris). In 1961, his works were included in the
International Sculpture Exhibition at the Musée Rodin, in Paris.

From 1994 to 2004, Basbous organized the International Symposium of Sculpture
in Rachana, Lebanon, where famous sculptors from around the world were invited to
create, sculpt and exhibit their works alongside his own.
Throughout his life, Basbous won many awards including the “Prix de l’Orient” in
Beirut in 1963 and the price of Biennale in Alexandria in 1974. When he died in 2006,
the President of the Lebanese Republic, in order to honor him, awarded him the
“Medal of the Lebanese Order of Merit in Gold.”

Basbous’s works express a lifelong exploration of the human form and its abstract
properties. Focused on the aesthetic principles of shape, movement, line and
material, his sculptures display a deeply ingrained sincerity and a search for the
essence of beauty. Working in the tradition of sculptors such as Auguste Rodin, Jean
Arp and Henry Moore, Alfred Basbous explores the potential of noble materials such
as bronze, wood and marble to express the sensuality and purity of the human form.
This aversion towards frivolous and meaningless embellishments echoes his own
philosophy of simplicity and earnestness.

The works of Alfred Basbous are part of numerous public and private collections
throughout the world, including the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Musée
Rodin in Paris. His monumental works are present in the public areas of Beirut and
many Lebanese cities.

PROFOUND FEELINGS
Helen El Khal on Alfred Basbous

With profound respect for his material and sensitivity to the color and texture of each
sculpture, Basbous exposes its inherent personality and, at the same time, uses its
character to express his own creative image. Although a large number of pieces
appear to be abstract, in fact they are not.

Basbous begins and ends with living forms - the angular or curving grace of a human
torso the instant pose of an animal’s physical movement, the introspective head in
the privacy of his thoughts.

There is strong fluidity in his lines, and a pure balance of form that harmoniously
vitalizes the space around it.

His works, perched, with a sense of imminent flight, contain a quiet joy that is perhaps
aroused by the simple tactile pleasure that they contain - for Basbous manages, out
of his fine sensitivity, to imbue the hard medium with a sense of living flesh, breathing
and sensual.

                                            Installation Shot . Galerie Tanit Beyrouth . 2020
                                            Huguette Caland . Alfred Basbous . Helen Khal

Helen Khal

            Helen Khal .Untitled . 1992 . Oil on paper mounted on MDF board . 30 x 45 cm

Born in Pennsylvania, USA, in 1923, Helen Khal is an artist of Lebanese descent, who
began painting at the age of 21. In 1946, she started her studies at the Lebanese
Academy of Fine Arts, ALBA and at the Art Students League, in New York.

In 1963, she established and directed Lebanon’s first permanent art gallery : Gallery
One.

Encouraged by the Lebanese artist Aref Rayess and others, Helen Khal held her first
individual exhibition in 1960 in Galerie Alecco Saab in Beirut. Her other one-woman
shows took place at Galerie Trois Feuilles d’Or, Beirut (1965); Galerie Manoug, Beirut
(1968); at the First National Bank, Allentown, Pennsylvania (1969); in Kaslik, Lebanon
(1970); at the Contact Art Gallery, Beirut (1972, 1974 and 1975) and at the Bolivar
Gallery in Kingston, Jamaica in 1975. Her work also appeared in the Biennales of
Alexandria and Sao.

In 2018 group show “feminité plurielles , with Huguette Caland ,Ethel Adnane, Salwa
Raouda and younger women artists

In 2019 she was part of an important group show in Musee Sursok Beirut.

Cesar Nammour of the MACAM Museum is a fervent defender of her work.

Huguette Caland

                              Huguette Caland . Untitled . 1980 . Oil on canvas . 38 x 58 cm

Born in 2931 daughter of Bechara El Khoury, the first post-independence president
of Lebanon, Huguette Caland spent her early life in Lebanon where she attended the
American University of Beirut. Moving to Paris in 1970, she spent the next seventeen
years immersed in the city’s bohemian culture, most notably working with the
celebrated fashion designer, Pierre Cardin with whom she developed a collection
of caftans in 1979. In 1983 Caland formed a close relationship with the Romanian
sculptor George Apostu, together they created a large number of paintings and
sculptures in their studio until his death in 1986. Moving to California, shortly after
Apostu’s death, Caland continued her artistic practice, eventually settling in a studio
designed by architect, Neil Kaufman near Venice Beach, Los Angeles in 1997. In 2013
Caland returned to her hometown of Beirut where she continued to work until
Her death in 2019.

Known for her use of simple, sinuous lines to explore eroticism and female sexuality,
Caland began to receive renewed recognition from the international art world
in recent years. Her work featured prominently in the 2012 exhibition, Modernités
Plurielles 1905-1970 at the Centre Pompidou and Twenty-three works, including
three kaftans displayed on enigmatic mannequins designed by the artist, were shown
in the Arsenal’s Dionysian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. The artist had her first
British solo museum exhibition at Tate St. Ives in 2019.

Huguette Caland’s work is included in private and public collections across the
Middle East, Europe and the United States, including British Museum, London;
Centre Pompidou, Paris; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Fondation National d’Art
Contemporain, Paris; LACMA, Los Angeles; Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles;
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego; Palm Springs Museum of Art, Palm Springs
and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

 Huguette Caland began to receive renewed recognition from the international
art world in recent years. Her work featured prominently in the 2012 exhibition,
Modernités Plurielles 1905-1970 at the Centre Pompidou and Twenty-three works,
including three kaftans displayed on enigmatic mannequins designed by the artist,
were shown in the Arsenal’s Dionysian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. The artist
had her first British solo museum exhibition at Tate St. Ives in 2019.

Paul Guiraguossian

                         Paul Guiragossian . L’été, (circa 1990) . Oil on canvas . 100 x 90 cm

Born in 1926 in Jerusalem to Armenian parents, survivors of the Armenian Genocide,
Paul Guiragossian experienced the consequences of exile from a very tender age.
Raised in boarding schools, he and his brother grew up away from their mother who
had to work to make sure her two sons got an education.

In the early 1940’s Paul and his family moved to Jaffa where he attended Studio
Yarkon to start improving his passion of painting. In the late 1940s they moved and
settled in Lebanon and Paul began teaching art in schools and privately.
In the 50’s Paul started teaching art in several Armenian schools and worked as an
illustrator. He later started his own business with his brother Antoine painting cinema
banners, posters and drawing illustrations for books. Soon after he was discovered
for his art and introduced to his contemporaries after which he began exhibiting his
works in Beirut and eventually all over the world.

by the Italian government to study at the Academia di Belle Arti di Firenze (The
Academy of Fine Arts of Florence). While in Florence Paul had multiple exhibitions
starting with a solo show in 1958 at the Galeria D’Arte Moderna “La Permanente”.

In 1962, Paul was granted another scholarship this time by the French Government to
study and paint in Paris at Les Atelier Des Maîtres De L’Ecole De Paris and by the end
of that year he had a solo exhibition at the Galerie Mouffe.
By the mid 60’s Guiragossian grew to become one of the most celebrated artists in
Lebanon and eventually of the Arab world and even though war broke out in the early
70’s his attachment to Lebanon grew bigger and his works became more colorful
with messages of hope for his people.
In 1989 Paul went to Paris to exhibit his works in La Salle Des Pas Perdus in UNESCO
and resided in the city with part of his family until 1991. Between 1989 and 1991 Paul
painted some of his largest masterpieces and at the end of that year he had a solo
exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe .

Hussein Madi

  Hussein Madi . Untitled . Not Dated . Aquarelle on paper mounted on canvas . 50 x 70 cm

B. 1938. Completing his studies at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in 1962,
Hussein Madi worked as an illustrator and cartoonist in Baghdad, Iraq before moving
to Rome in 1963 in order to continue his education at Accademia di Belle Arti.
Returning to Lebanon in 1986, Madi taught sculpture and engraving at the Institute
of Fine Arts of the Lebanese University in Beirut.
He has since had numerous exhibitions in private galleries in Beirut.

A painter, sculptor and printmaker, Madi’s work draws influence from stylised figuration
in Modern Western art and the traditional abstraction of Islamic art.

Hussein Madi’s work was included at the Venice Biennale in 2003, and has been
shown at numerous international exhibitions, including, at the British Museum,
London, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris and Tokyo’s Ueno Museum.
In 20019 he had a solo show of his early work at the Beirut Art fair, a book was
published by Dongola, covering some works from the sixties till the early seventies.

Galerie Tanit Beyrouth | East Village Bldg | Ground Floor | Armenia Street | Mar Mikhael | +961 1 562 812 | beirut@galerietanit.com