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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nov 15, 2023 | Bonhams | London | Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art | 24 | $****** - ****** | La Famille |
paintings
116 x 87 cm (45.67 x 34.25 in)
oil on masonite
signed "PAUL G" and dated "62" (lower right)
Property from a private collection, Beirut
Illustrated:
EUROP Genève Art magazine, April 1999 Edition, page 61
L"Art A Genève Art, Geneva, 1999
Note:
This work is sold with a photo certificate from the Paul Guiragossian Foundation
"They taught us in History that there have been heroes who led fearless battles such as Alexander the Great who killed thousands of men on the shores of Saida and Tyre. He is considered a hero?...They call Napoleon a Hero. What kind of hero kills thousands of people in frozen temperatures like in Austerlitz and is considered a hero? Who is a Hero besides the Mother?. The Mother is the Symbol of purity, faith and unconditional Love and the greatest secret in the Universe is Love"
- Paul Guiragossian
Achieving recognition in his own lifetime and honoured with a state funeral upon his death, Paul Guiragossian is remembered as one of the most talented and progressive artists to emerge from Lebanon. Guiragossian was born in 1926 in Jerusalem to survivors of the Armenian genocide. Due to exile, Guiragossian"s family settled in Beirut, Lebanon in 1947. In 1956, Guiragossian received a scholarship from the Italian Government to study at The Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, which was soon followed by a further scholarship from the French government to attend Les Ateliers des Maîtres de L"Ecole de Paris. By the mid-1960s Guiragossian had grown to become one of the most celebrated artist in the Arab world and in 1989 he became the first artist to have a solo show at the Institut de Monde Arabe in Paris.
Guiragossian"s genius lies in his ability to simultaneously provoke both joy and despair. Although the war broke out in the early 1970s, his attachment for his country grew larger and his works became more colourful with messages of hope for his people. From the mid-1970s onwards, most of Guiragossian"s paintings conveyed a sense of solidarity, a collective joy or at times suffering. The female figure was also seen visible throughout Guiragossian"s oeuvre; the fascination with the mother being the vital support system through good and bad, the caretaker and the bearer of life plays a central role and a key subject matter in his paintings. His work reflects a reality both deeply personal and universally relatable, as his obsession with the subject matter transcends from his own eternal longing for his own mother.
These stunning paintings are superlative examples of Guiragossian"s gestural and expressive painting style as clothed female figures are defined by thick elongated impasto paint.
La Famille is an emotionally captivating composition; here Guiragossian celebrates and glorifies motherhood by painting allusions to the religious icons of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus. The figures are dressed in a soft pastel colour palette infusing a sense of warmth, positivity and hope. The brown earthy tones against the white create a gentle aesthetic and beautiful harmony. The proximity of the faceless elongated figures with their arms wrapped around the new born baby suggests the coming together of a family and the intimate and eternal bond between them regardless of their fear and displacement due to the war.
Paul Guiragossian (Lebanon, 1926-1993)
La Famille
oil on masonite, framed
signed "PAUL G" and dated "62" (lower right), executed in 1962
116 x 87cm (45 11/16 x 34 1/4in).
