Introduction:

Born in Baalbeck in 1932, Rafic Charaf took up painting as a hobby but then enrolled in the Lebanese Fine Arts Academy. In 1955, he obtained a scholarship from the Spanish Government to continue his studies at the Academie Royale San Fernando in Madrid; in 1961, it was the Italian Government which provided him with a further scholarship to the Pietro Vanucci Academy. He has exhibited his works at numerous exhibitions in Lebanon and abroad, receiving the National Education Ministry's first prize in Beirut in 1959.
"Escaping by intrepid jaunts over vast areas in order to reach the tradition of ousted homeless pirates and lofty customs. With water bedizened, gardens anticipated at the indeterminate, contrasts brought out immaculate from a perspective that bathes in a demonstrative stirring of contingencies. An inexhaustible traveler in search of wrecked sunken galleys that are surrounded by legendary reunions of historical identification. On the trajectory of the enigma of alternating rebirths, on the shadowy path in a sharpened silence, a bird in his motionless adventure at the doorway of the authentic and close by the unexpected, he will return to trace our thoughts, touch our look till it burns. Digging down to reach the old wall of resources, in that postponed substitution of time at the filming of myths, an impetuous dimension and the black bird plunges back down onto your breast, seizes you at unexpected random, lying in wait for your destiny."

Hoda Adib