(Self- portrait)

From the very beginning, the critics disagree about the "identity" of Paul Guiragossian's art. Some insist on its proletarian character while others dwell on its hieratic aspects, reminiscent of religious rites.

But Guiragossian remained silent. It was enough for him to be struggling with his painting, to work it endlessly, as if totally possessed by his art.

Biography

Born in Jerusalem in 1926 to survivors of the genocide, Paul Guiragossian settled in Beirut with his family in 1939. He started to paint in 1942 at the Yarkon Studio. In 1957, he received a scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. In 1961-2, he spent a year studying and painting in Paris. The rest of his life was spent living and painting in Beirut.

Paul Guiragossian's early education was strictly religious. In 1944 he began his artistic training at the Italian Academy Pietro Iaghetti, then between 1946 and 1949 at the Institute Yarcon.

He completed his formative period by attending the Florence Academy of Fine Arts in 1956.

After that, he widened his circle of contacts with the West and spent three years in France and as many in the USA.

Guiragossian had a foreboding sense of tragedy from his earliest years. Some of his early paintings were haunted by a figure who had lost one leg, a prophecy of his own misfortune when in the early 1970s he lost a leg in an elevator accident. In his lifetime, Guiragossian became Lebanon's most celebrated painter, a renown he retains to this day. Upon his death in 1993, Guiragossian received a state funeral.

Paul Guiragossian was consumed by his art and paid little attention to anything but his family and his painting. His mature works express the complexities of the human condition through renderings of vertical, elongated, purged bodies, both static and in motion, painted with thick layers of often luminous colors. He also created frescoes, mosaics, stained glass windows, and sculptures, and was a book illustrator. His paintings are always serious in feeling, and it is impossible to resist their force and beauty.

Livre de valeur: Paul Guiragossian – Emmagoss avec une dédicace unique de l’artiste peintre à Mr Michel Abou Jaoudé avec 3 petits dessins signé par l’artiste.