Albareh presents an exhibition by renowned Lebanese painter Fatima El Hajj. The exhibition titled " Readings " pays homage to the “book” and the act of reading.

The artist will also present a talk about Contemporary art and its repercussions in Europe on the 10th of April at 7p.m. at Albareh.  

 

The book and the act of reading is what inspires Fatima’s painted meditations, through colorful interstices staged in the familiar textures of the gardens she has admired: Her family estate in Wardanieh, the beautiful garden of roses in Rmaileh and the paintings of the Impressionist masters. She receives inspiration from the illustrations of Yahya Ibn Mahmood al-Wasiti for a thirteenth-century collection of stories written by the poet Abu al-Qasim Muhammad bin Ali Al-Hariri.

Her palette of strong red, yellow and blue navigates through the canvas with the intimacy of a reader, carefully tiptoeing around the most difficult passages with the curiosity of a child, leafing through ages of the world, lifetimes, situations and emotions at the ease of a soft breeze.

The exhibition is a friendly warning against a bookless society in which the joy of conversation and friendship is replaced by the rapid and fleeting, distortion of the memory.

Exhibited internationally since 1985, El Hajj deploys the use of modern elaborate techniques alongside motifs from the world of nature, intellectual landscapes and spiritual meditations; gardens and nature occupy a prominent place in her work.

About Fatima El Hajj

Fatima El Hajj was born in Wardanieh, Lebanon, in 1953. She is a graduate from the Institute of Fine Arts at the Lebanese University and received art training in Leningrad and Paris. At present, she is a professor of art at the Institute of Fine Arts in Lebanon. Since her first solo exhibition at the Spanish Cultural Center in Beirut, 1985, her work has been showcased extensively throughout the world and is part of several important public and private collections.

Several works of the artist have been sold at important auctions, including “La Lecture”, sold at Christie’s Dubai Modern & Contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish Art in 2011, and that can be seen as a prelude to the current exhibition, “Readings”. She received the International Picasso Award in 1984 and is a recipient of the first prize for the 2007 Emmar International Art Symposium, Dubai.