Fatima El Hajj
Sieste

About the Item

Fatima El-Hajj, born in Lebanon in 1953, graduated from the Lebanese University’s Fine Arts Institution, the completed a second degree at the Leningrad Fine Arts Academy, and finally finished her schooling with a degree from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. She then taught at the Beirut Fine Arts institute from 1985 (the year she was awarded the Picasso Prize in Madrid) until 2017. Since 1986, she has shown regular exhibitions in Lebanon, Spain, and France, as well as in other Arab countries where she is often recognized, such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Syria, Marrocco, and Qatar. Her work is present in the IMA’s permanent collections, among others. Her paintings show an absence of concession, a search for a personal world, for a harmony that is born from contradictory sentiments, between tranquillity and revolt, dreams and doubt. She paints most often in a large scale, on canvas or panels, as comfortable working with oils as with acrylics. As a colorist, she does not ignore the effects of her materials. Movement, light, and suggestions of form work together in her pieces, sometimes to the point of taunting abstraction. The exhibition “The Gardens of the Soul” offers a faithful summary of the work of Fatima El-Hajj, who is seen in her country as the fruits of her French schooling.It is, however, important to note that, having been born and raised in the East, and as she lives there now, she has naturally known to stray from the “orientalist stereotypes” that are ultimately nothing more than a superficial glimpse of one culture upon another, with its inevitable distorted prism, and its received ideas. However, such a classification would be insufficient by far. We must instead find within her art a bridge between two worlds, the East and the West, the visible and the invisible, a style of painting that aligns itself with the universal goal of art." Thierry Savatier, Blog le Monde

Creator:

Fatima El Hajj (1953, Lebanese)

Dimensions:

Height: 39.38 in (100 cm)Width: 47.25 in (120 cm)

Medium:

Oil,Acrylic

Period:

2010-

Condition:

Gallery Location:

PARIS, FR

Reference Number: