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 Jean
Khalifeh 1923-1978
Born in Hadtoun, Lebanon, Jean Khalifé attended ALBA in 1947. In
1951, he won a scholarship from the Lebanese government and, from
1951 until 1954, he lived in Paris, studying at the Ecole Nationale
Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and at the Académie de la
Grande Chaumière. In 1959, he spent one year in Rome, following
which he spent another between London and Paris.
Between 1967 and 1969,
Khalifé was President of the Association of Lebanese Artists,
Painters and Sculptors. While in Beirut, he taught at the Ecole
Supérieure d'Ingénieurs, at the Italian Cultural Centre
and at the Lebanese University.
He participated in many
group exhibitions in Lebanon and abroad. They include the Salon
d'Inverno at Galleria Margutissima, Rome (1959); the Salon of the
Sursock Museum, Beirut (1962); the Biennales of Alexandria (1960-1966)
and Sao Paulo (1966-1971); the Tate Gallery, London (1971); and
the Nika Museum, Tokyo (1973).
His one-man shows include:
Galerie Alecco Saab, Beirut (1960, 1961), Galerie de l'Université,
Paris (1963); Dar el Fan, Beirut (1970); the John F. Kennedy Centre,
Beirut (1971), the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1971) and the Cultural
Centre, Damascus.
Khalifé was awarded
many prizes including the Lebanese Ministry of National Education
Award (1956, 1957) and the Prize of the President's Wife Zalfa Chamoun,
Beirut (1968). He was awarded the Lebanese Order of Merit in 1979.
In 1982, he was paid a special tribute by the Sursock Museum, along
with other artists who had died since 1975.
Article:
The method in a work painted
by Khalifé reveals a presence much out of ordinary - a presence
of strength, energy, and a virile rationality of design. Another
factor comes to light: the quality of the graceful and energetic
colour that explodes in flowers and bouquets and the large contrasted
surfaces of sunlight, shadow, and sea.
Drawing and colour, however, remain subservient to an inner truth,
truth found in the luminous foreheads of young girls that a contrast
of light and shade causes to "hesitate". Sadness, hope,
dialogue, exchange - so many gestures of soul and body which express
love and expectation. Elsewhere it is the reign of silence and of
anguish which can be seen... His painting is equally inspired by
those profound movements of the soul which give to the human body
such a wealth of emotional expression. And it is essentially a human
message, a witness of human tenderness.
Solitude and communication, lines reduced to the essential and the
virulence of colour, forms graceful or else fractured - the painting
of Jean Khalifé uncovers that dauntless zone of our national identity
which knows the double challenge of life and of death. His work
delivers this message that is epitomized in the vertical lines of
the independence of character and in the emotional richness of the
curves with their hospitality, friendship, and love.
His work is full of virile certainty, yet it raises profound questions
concerning the modern struggle for form, for essential vectors of
force, for colour and economy of gesture. He was able to keep in
step with the great international movement of modern painting but
he did no, however, lose sight of the fact that painting, true painting,
springs from the source itself of country and of village.
Hani Abi Saleh
Composition in Orange
and Blue, 1972, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm
The painting was originally entitled "Nahr Al Kalb (Dog River)"
It was restored by the artist before his death in 1974
►► Some
of the artist's artwork
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