Ayyam
Gallery Damascus
- Exhibition of Artist Moustafa Fathi
January
9 to 28 2010 at Ayyam Gallery Damascus
Ayyam gallery Damascus is pleased to present an
exhibition of works by the late Moustapha Fathi
(1942-2009). To be held January 9 – 28, this solo
show in memoriam
will highlight one of Syria's pioneers of contemporary
art and will be accompanied
by a catalog spanning two decades of the artist's
work.
Born
in Deraa, Fathi received a Diploma in Engraving
from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus in 1966
and a Diploma in Engraving and Lithography from
the Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris in
1978. Throughout his career he exhibited regularly
at home and abroad, most notably in a number of
important French institutions, including the Picasso
Museum in Antibes, which acquired one of his works.
Between
1966 and 1987, he taught at the Faculty of Fine
Arts, a position that solidified his participation
in the Damascus art scene. A significant figure
as both an academic and practicing artist, Fathi
was part of a generation that worked not only amidst
Syria's heyday in modernism but also during its
emergence into new frontiers. As such, his work
possesses elements of modernist approaches blended
with recent experiments in art, a combination that
pioneered the country's contemporary painting.
This
is most evident in his interest in traditional Syrian
folk art, which he pursued with extensive research
in the late 1980s. The impact of this study is evident
in the abstract canvases for which he is best known.
Inspired by woodblock printing techniques and seals
made by local artisans, Fathi fashioned a unique
style of art that distinguished him among his Syrian
colleagues. Yet by reviving a local tradition and
infusing it with contemporary modes of representation,
he was part of a ground-breaking school of Arab
art that sought to further visual culture while
tapping into notions of memory and time through
explorations of the past.
The
artist once confirmed, "I derive my inspiration
from shapes. Shape has taken a long journey until
it took its final configuration. Tools are a form
of human thought. They are the trace of the human
being. They are human being themselves. I like a
tool and it always captures my attention, not because
it is a scene, but because it is a living thought.
Paintings, on the other hand, are an accumulation
of the images and shapes of tools and stones in
my head."
With
hundreds of woodblocks that he carved himself, Fathi
created intricate mixed media canvases that employed
elements of abstract expressionism, Islamic art
and ancient hieroglyphics There are traces of the
early work of abstract expressionist painters Jackson
Pollack and Lee Krasner, in which inanimate objects
are layered at random as a means of creating depth
and space, yet the fashioning of an image with a
centralized composition and a background of a solid
color field harks back to the tapestries of Bedouin
societies. His palette frequently employed shades
of black, brown, white and grey—earth tones that
evoke Syria's varied landscape and a return to the
use of everyday materials as tools of creative expression.
In essence, Fathi's work has its roots in Syria
but its vision lies in international art.
Ayyam Gallery - Mezzeh West Villas - 30, Chile Street
- Samawi Building, Damascus, Syria. Tel: +963 11
613 1088. Fax: +963 11 613 1087
Sat-Thu, 10AM-8PM
info@ayyamgallery.com
http://www.ayyamgallery.com
