DUBAI: Highlights from the auction house’s upcoming Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art sale, which takes place in London on Nov. 6 and runs online from Oct. 28 to Nov. 11.
Paul Guiragossian
‘Automne’
“Profoundly shaped by his experience of exile and displacement, Paul Guiragossian developed a unique visual language that blends naturalism, modernism, and figurative abstraction to explore the human condition,” Christie’s lot essay says of the Jerusalem-born Lebanese artist. This work from the 1980s is widely considered one of his masterpieces, and has previously fetched the second-highest price for one of the artist’s works at auction. “‘Automne’ reveals the artist’s unequalled mastery of color,” the lot essay states. “With thick and elongated brushstrokes in various nuances of yellow (said to have been his favorite color), the composition reflects every facet of the human condition with radiant complexity through multiple figurative references, while simultaneously revealing the artist’s appeal for abstraction … The thick impasto applied to the canvas offers a sculptural and Expressionist quality that allows the figures to leap out of the canvas.
“(The work) oscillates between happiness and sadness,” the essay continues, “expressing hope for a brighter future while alluding to an everlasting sense of melancholy.”
Abdulhalim Radwi
‘Untitled’
With the exception of Mohammed Al-Saleem, Radwi is perhaps Saudi Arabia’s most significant Modernist artist. Al-Saleem was one of those fortunate enough to receive government sponsorship to study the arts overseas — obtaining a doctorate from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. “Radwi's work is characterized by its fusion of traditional architecture, desert life and folklore with modernist influences, resulting in brightly colored semi-abstracted compositions such as this city scape showcasing arabesque curves and Arabic letters,” the lot essay states.
Samia Halaby
‘Gardenia’
This 1978 painting by the New York-based Palestinian artist, whom Christie’s calls “one of the Arab world’s most important contemporary painters and a leading figure in the international abstract art scene,” is part of her much sought-after “Diagonal Flight” series, “in which she explores geometric abstraction through diagonal lines and contrasting colors, resulting in a dynamic spatial interplay.” Like much of Halaby’s work, it is inspired in part by Islamic geometry.
Kamal Boullata
‘Nocturne I’
The Palestinian painter “became a prominent artist of his generation,” the lot essay states, thanks to pieces such as this, “a vibrant work … representative of his harmonious and rhythmical geometric oeuvre that navigates the tension between exile and belonging.” That’s a tension with which Boullata was painfully familiar, having left his homeland to study in Rome and Washington D.C. before settling in Berlin.
“Boullata described the manual exercise of these canvases as a process that swings from the mechanical to the organic: he begins with a pencil and a ruler to create a mathematical rendering, and once a pattern forms in his work, it becomes a skeleton ready to receive color as flesh,” the essay explains.
Mahmoud Said
‘Mekarzel Hill’
The Alexandrian painter is regarded as the father of Egyptian Modernism and is one of the Arab world’s most celebrated artists. This particular work was once owned by former Egyptian Prime Minister Hussein Pasha Sirry, and is described by Christie’s as “a mesmerizing landscape” in which Said “effortlessly captures the rolling hills, rich earth, and summer skies of Lebanon, where he spent many of his summers.”
Laila Shawa
‘City of Peace (Jerusalem)’
The late Palestinian artist was, Christie’s says, “known for her brave persona and bold artistic oeuvre” that “expressed her perspective as a Palestinian female, offering sharp socio-political commentary and highlighting the difficult realities faced by Palestinians under occupation.” This large-scale work from the 1970s, when Shawa was in her thirties, “conveys the artist’s longing for her homeland and depicts a hopeful vision for the future of Palestine.”
