 Toufic
Abdul Al (1938
- 2002)
1- Exhibitions:
• 1958 Participated
in the Annual Spring Exhibition sponsored by the Lebanese Ministry
of Education & fine Arts
• 1962 Presented his first private exhibition (24 oil paintings)
in Aley, Lebanon
• 1963 Held a private exhibition at Fine Arts Hall in Brumana, Lebanon
• 1966 Under the supervision of The Lebanese Artists Association
for painting and sculpture in Beirut, he showed his water colour
works of ten years (1956-1966). The exhibition included 48 water
colour works
• 1971 Held an exhibition of 80 oil paintings in Baghdad
• 1976 Held an exhibition of 24 oil paintings depicting Tal El Zaatar
Palestinian Refugee camp in Beirut
• 1982 Held an exhibition at Dar Al-Karama Gallery in Beirut
2- Professional Memberships & Awards:
• 1960 Founding
Member of Lebanese Artist Association
• 1969 Founding Member and Secretary The Palestinian Plastic Artist
Union
• 1970 Granted the Soursouk Award Museum in Lebanon
• 1970 Granted the Lotus Award in Moscow
• 1971 Member of The Single Dimension Group, Baghdad
• 1973 Founding Member of People’s Gallery for Plastic Art in Lebanon
• 1980 Member of Arab Plastic Artists Union, and the Palestinian
Writers Society
• 1991 Granted Naji El Ali Shield Award by the Syrian Culture Ministry
Fifty years of experience of the artist Toufic Abdul-Al; resulted
in hundreds of oil, and water colour paintings, beside works of
sculpture, lineation and poetry can not be easily categorised. This
unusual experience, though there was no identification between his
artistic shifts and the concept of the “phase” or “school” in modern
European art, his journey was nothing but a search for the artistic
ego, for individuality, method, and for the characteristics of the
art of Toufic Abdul-Al himself.
Throughout his
long exhausted difficult journey, the artistic reality always presented
its crisis under two main titles:
• The recent emergence of the Palestinian plastic art and the absence
of the link between the artist, and his artistic history inheritance
• The weakness of the prevailing stylistic currents which attempted
to reach cohesion between the conditions of the creative work of
art and its struggle conditions due to the continuing conflict in
the Middle East.
This is explaining
why experimentalism was the dominant style in the Palestinian plastic
art, and the memory of the negated basic environment kept on embracing
the tools of work until they were lately changed by the revolutionary
reality, its tools and concerns.
Along the experience
of Toufic Abdul-Al, was really unique. His experience, covering
the paintings included in the book and the artistic inheritance
since the Canaanites. Reached their utmost in the field of naturalist
arts whereas very often the skill of the artist added more beauty
to the foreign patterns which were usually imitated, and the artist
found a wider space for his imagination.
3- Departure
Toufic Abdul-Al
was born in Acre October 3, 1938. His father was a wholesale and
retail grain and butter dealer. Palestine at the time was staying
in a rebellion state, revolutionists were the masters of the situation
and people had to choose between blood or money. In order to preserve
his trade, his father made the second choice.
The house he
lived in was situated in the Al-Mahadla suburb. It was an old three
storey house with ornamented ceiling and an ivory staircase overlooking
the sea. On the third storey there were high copper beds. In the
house there were arches, old windows and ornamented red brick tiles
on the roof, all this given him a background influenced greatly
by eastern decoration.
He used to skip
school except for the art lessons and sport. So his relation with
the school had an inimical nature. He used to go down to the western
beach in Acre where he watched the fishermen and envied them for
their “liberation” from the desk and the blackboard. The big nets
were interesting and attractive to him. He enjoyed listening to
the songs, and watching the reflection of the red boats on the blue
water of the sea. When a feast was held the smell of the cooking
rose above the big hats and masts. These scenes took a large place
in his work in the sixties, especially the “Blue stage”.
He used to stand
outside the night clubs offering the jasmine for the nighthawks.
With the little money he earned he arranged a strange trip by train
from Acre to Haifa. When his train arrived in Haifa he got off and
stayed on the platform, waiting for the same train to take him back
to Acre. During the trip he would look out for the mills.
In later works
of Abdul-Al the crystal glass became a part of the colour and its
gradation.
At the school
in Acre, his arts teacher, George Fakhouri, arranged an exhibition
of Tawfiq’s paintings when he was only 9 years of age. His paintings
were in watercolour and coloured chalk. Among the paintings was
a black woman carrying a bunch of jasmine, and whom the pupils recognised
as the woman living next to the school.
From his departure
in 1948 until his first exhibition of oils, (24 paintings) in Aley
in 1962, Toufic Abdul-Al had passed through some hard and painful
experiences. In Burja village (in Al-Shouf), he continued is hobbies
with new reality and a deeper experience.
He was constantly
being dismissed from school because of frequent absence. Among the
woods, hills and fountains of Burja he found compensation for Ilot
village. While in Tripoli he rediscovered the moods of meditation
he had known on the western shore of Acre. He also exchanged selling
jasmine for manufacturing and selling wheels and went into sport
becoming a weight-lifter. Exile added to his rich experience and
thus formed the first of its methodical features. In Burja his hobby
sculpture started to take shape. He used to offer his works representing
historical figures in art and literature to his school. In Tripoli
he arranged a school show of pastel, carbon and water colour paintings.
4- Now
where the violet did came from?
In his childhood
he was fond of the reflection of the red boats on the blue sea.
It is obvious that the violet can be produced by mixing the red
with the blue. And as it is said, “the colours which are mixed by
the eyes have a greater effect than the one made by the mixture
of the paints.” Therefore, Abdul-Al had a long personal experience
with violet. From the window of his house in Acre he could see the
colour violet on the surface of the sea at sunset.
But the colours
in this painting and in several others are not pure and clean. At
first glance these dark colours seem lifeless, but like those of
Cezanne they sometimes seem lifeless just because they are quiet,
unexcitable and pale. But once one becomes familiar with these paintings
and understands, one starts to see their beauty and feels happy
with this unvanishing colour. The colour, which at first glance
seems lifeless, will later seem lively and rich. It seems a clear
and deliberate neglect of proportion and perspective which are,
according to Cezanne results of the design, while according to Abdul-Al
it is not just a result of design but also of the experimental search
for new forms which preserve the three dimensions (depth – solidity
– distance). Through depth as a distance effective having umbra
and light, he came close to the impressionists, and his umbras became
colourful.
5- Sophism
All the works
he achieved during this stage were influenced by two contradictory
misgivings which he lived through fully: Sufism and the nightwalkers.
He used to run to the hill to spend some hours with his friend,
father Sadir an artist and head of the monastery, who had a studio
in the church which contained hundreds of paintings. Together with
vintage wine they talked about philosophy, art and life. The opposite
of father Sadir was Toufic Abdul-Al’s friend in Broumana School,
Isam Rafi who had dozens of paintings about death, calamity and
destruction, though he did not exhibit any. His personalities were
a strange and terrific mummy. In this atmosphere Toufic Abdul-Al
painted ‘The Cross’ in quite a few occasions like his painting ‘A
funeral at down’.
6- The Blue Stage
Between 1956
– 1967 Toufic Abdul-Al produced apart from the water colours, 24
oil paintings which were dominated by violet – dark blue-blue. These
were given the name “The Blue Stage”.
In shade and
height he presented three styles of umbra:
• Cores as a
height
• Reflection of the shade of formations on the surface of water
as long strokes
• The shade and light of the man running in the painting
In the space,
he extended plain and wide areas, with smaller ones between which
he put acute colour lines. All this was done in an obstruction of
Nature, and surrealism of dreaming unrestricted formations. The
Blue Stage became a field in which he planted the lightness of the
colour, the flat wide plains, the ornamented spaces, the abstraction
of nature and strong lineation.
7- Lineation and Sculpture
This distinction
was not confirmed to the oil paintings, for what Abdul Al had achieved
in lineation and sculpture was equal to what he achieved in painting.
His distinctive lineation, which carries its one character, had
become a new sign in the graphic art regarding sceptre-which he
calls an interesting game- he achieved a big progress when he introduced
into it ornamentations and fed it with colours. Most outstanding
of his sculpture works are: Fertility – A Baghdadi – The Urn Carrier
– A Girl from Bait Laham – A Girl from Ram Allah which he exhibited
in Beirut and Damascus.
One of Abdul Al's masterpieces
A face from my homeland, Oil on canvas, size 50x60 cm, dated 1960
►►
Some of the artist's Artwork
Contact: tarek@abdulal.com
Online portfolio of the artist available
on abdulal.com
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