Tunisian, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 13 April 1946, in Tunis.
Painter, engraver.
Nouvelle Figuration.
After obtaining his diploma from the school of fine arts in Tunis in 1966, Ben Meftah went on to study engraving at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1966 to 1971...
Tunisian, 20th – 21st century, female.
Active in France from 1972.
Born 30 May 1960, in Tunis.
Painter, engraver.
From 1980 to 1985 Meriem Bouderbala studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Aix en Provence. She lives and works in Nice. Her canvases are filled with wide bands of dark colour intersected by lighter bands. She uses greys, blue-greys, beiges and blacks. The material lets itself go from one stroke to another, evoking the weather, the dust, the sand, the light, the grain of the rock....
Egyptian, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in France from 1974.
Born 27 October 1949, in Cairo.
Painter, sculptor, engraver. Figures.
Sayed Darwiche learnt painting from his father, a calligrapher. He left Egypt after the two Egyptian-Israeli wars. His drawings and paintings show the figures of men, women and children, but through a violent form of expressionist deformation which approaches the work of the Abstract Expressionist artist Wilhem De Kooning, though his chosen blend of colours gives a sense of softness and luxury. Sayed Darwiche's sculptures, carved from old wood or quarried stone, come close to abstraction. They consist of curved, taut volumes whose sensual fullness contrasts with the ruggedness of his drawings and paintings....
Lebanese, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 1951, in Beirut.
Painter, collage artist, engraver. Portraits.
He was a student at the institute of fine arts of the Lebanese University from 1971 to 1975, then studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, from 1979 to 1981...
(b Aïn Beida, Jan 20, 1947).
Algerian painter and graphic artist. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Algiers, and in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Ecole des Arts Décoratifs and Institut d’Urbanisme de l’Académie de Paris. After returning to Algeria he worked at the Bureau d’Etudes des Tanneries and the Bureaux d’Etudes des Textiles, and he then went to Tunisia, where he became cultural adviser at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Tunis. Inspired by the calligraphic movement in Arab painting in the 1960s, he explored the potential of abstract calligraphic compositions in graphic art to great effect (e.g. the engravings Testament of the Enemy, 1981) and also utilized such media as wood, silk, parchment and ceramics for this purpose, often with a minimal use of colour. Since 1970 he has exhibited his work in Europe, the Middle East, Japan, South America and the USA, and has won numerous awards.
Third World Biennale of Graphic Art...Tunisian, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 3 December 1946, in Tunis.
Painter, engraver.
Hédi Labanne studied painting at the school of fine arts in Tunis, then worked from 1971 and 1975 at the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris. Reduced to the barest elements, his drawing nonetheless reflects his acute observations of the rich diversity of everyday life....
Israeli, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in France from 1975.
Born 1946, in Rehovat.
Sculptor, painter, lithographer, draughtsman, video artist, installation artist.
During the 1970s Micha Laury lived in a kibbutz in Israel and began to work as a self-taught artist. He moved to Tel Aviv in ...
Israeli, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active also in France.
Born 1954, in Jerusalem.
Painter, pastellist, draughtsman, engraver. Portraits, self-portraits, interiors with figures, urban landscapes, still-lifes.
Ra’anan Levy trained at the Accademia del Belle Arti in Florence between 1975 and 1978. He received a scholarship from the Dutch state and stayed at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in ...
(b Najaf, 1944).
Iraqi calligrapher, painter, printmaker and writer, active in Paris (see fig.). He studied painting and calligraphy in Baghdad from 1960 to 1969, and in 1969 exhibited his work at the Iraqi Artists’ Society exhibition and at the French Cultural Centre in Baghdad. The same year he went to Paris and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts until 1975. Thereafter he lived in Paris. Although influenced by traditional calligraphy, he developed his own calligraphic style, which incorporated painterly elements. In many of his works, for example Je suis le feu tapi dans la pierre. Si tu es de ceux qui font jailler l’étincelle alors frappe (1984; Paris, Inst. Monde Arab.), he employed proverbs and quotations from a range of sources. He also researched and wrote about Arabic calligraphy.
Turkish, 20th – 21st century, female.
Active in France.
Born 1955, in Istanbul.
Painter, engraver.
Esin Okcu is a graduate in painting from the academy of fine arts of Istanbul and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She favours gestural Abstraction with strong chiaroscuro contrasts. She has taken part in collective exhibitions, including the Salon d’Automne, Paris, ...
Iranian, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in France.
Born 1950, in Lahijan.
Painter, draughtsman, watercolourist, pastellist, engraver, lithographer, illustrator. Landscapes, fruit, flowers.
Farhad Ostovani was born in northern Iran and started painting at the age of 12 with a traditional master. He went on to study fine arts at Tehran University from ...
Kurdish, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in France since 1990 and naturalised since 1997.
Born 1955, in Khanaqin.
Painter, engraver, draughtsman. Figures, nudes, scenes with figures.
Ramzi Ghotbaldin graduated from the Baghdad institute of fine arts in 1975. He settled in Paris in 1990. He paints in acrylic and wax on a range of supports. His art, perhaps affected by a Kurdish childhood spent in adversity, tends towards sombre harmonies in brown, grey and black shot through with a few colourful dashes....
Tunisian, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active especially in France since 1969.
Born 13 June 1948, in Tunis.
Painter, watercolourist, pastellist, engraver. Local scenes, landscapes with figures, urban landscapes.
Orientalism.
Schems was the student of Ridha Bettaïeb in Tunis; he then worked in public studios in Paris, including at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He depicts typical places using a traditional technique, though in certain scenes with figures, his stroke becomes freer, more incisive and luxuriant, leading to a certain Expressionist tendency....
Swiss, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active from 1979 to 1983 and naturalised in Israel.
Born 1941, in Basel.
Painter, watercolourist, draughtsman, sculptor, engraver. Figures, scenes with figures, landscapes.
Jörg Schuldhess was of Italian Jewish descent. He had a Christian education, before converting to Judaism in ...
Irish, 20th – 21st century, female.
Born 1939, in India, to an Irish mother and an English father.
Painter (mixed media), tapestry maker, engraver.
Maria Simonds-Gooding's family returned from India in 1947 and settled in County Kerry. She studied at the National College of Art in Dublin, the Centre de Peinture in Brussels and at Bath Academy in Corsham, England. In ...
Palestinian, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in France from c. 1980.
Born 1948.
Painter (mixed media), sculptor of assemblages, engraver.
Nasser Soumi obtained a degree in fine arts in the engraving department at the faculty of fine arts in Damascus. From 1980 to 1982, he was a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris....
Tunisian, 20th – 21st century, male.
Born 1 January 1949, in Lezdine (Nabeul).
Painter, engraver.
Gouider Triki was a student at the school of fine arts in Tunis from 1966 to 1971, where he studied engraving, then at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the engraving studios of Jacques Lagrange and Lucien Coutaud. In ...
Lebanese, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in France.
Born 1955.
Painter, engraver. Figures, scenes with figures.
Paul Wardé, who lives and works in Paris, is an engraver and also produces lithographs.
He has taken part in various public exhibitions: 1986 and 1988, Biennale de l’Estampe Contemporaine, Paris; ...
Israeli, 20th – 21st century, male.
Active in Israel.
Born 1957, in Aïn Beïda, Algeria.
Painter, engraver. Still-lifes.
Reuven Zahavi studied at the Bezalel academy of fine arts in Jerusalem. He paints objects - tables, chairs, toys and construction vehicles - associating them with invented items of his own creation that he describes as ‘indeterminate floating objects’, which then form the subject of a series. He uses as materials tools that he makes himself, giving his pictures a ‘trademark’ in the form of stripes rubbed on by plastic blocks....
