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Lot 15^*

Paul Guiragossian
(Lebanon, 1926-1993)
Beneath the Veil

Amended

The Art of Lebanon Part II and Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art

12 October 2016, 14:00 BST

London, New Bond Street

£80,000 - £120,000

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Nima Sagharchi

Group Head

Tel: +44 20 7468 8342

Nima.Sagharchi@bonhams.com

Paul Guiragossian (Lebanon, 1926-1993)

Beneath the Veil
oil on canvas, framed
signed "Paul.G" (lower right), executed circa 1970's
120 x 65cm (47 1/4 x 25 9/16in).

Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Beirut

Exhibited:
1970's, Gallery 27, Paul Guiragossian, Beirut

"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

With his rich polychromatic palette, and mastery in capturing the tenuous fringe between abstraction and naturalism, Guiragossian faithfully captures within the contours of paint the melancholia of the human condition. Deeply affected by the tragic events of the Armenian genocide and the suffering of the Palestnian and Lebanese people during the numerous conflicts which punctuated his life, Guiragossian works often focus on matriarchal and feminine subject matters in homage of his belief in the supremacy of the mother figure

In the figure of the mother, here seen in her "pre-maternal" form as a bride-to-be, Guiragossian points to the duality of her plight in bearing the emotional burden of her families hardship as well as that of her own, the suffering of others is therefore realized through the anguish of the mother for her children, and she as a medium both amplifies and intensifies this suffering. This also highlights the morbid irony of societies which hurt those who are life givers, thus alienating them from their life-giving qualities.

The present painting is distinctive and unique in its replacement of Guiragossian's signature "close knit" figures with a single, monumental subject; a veiled woman, quite possibly a bride, exuding grace and a modest sensuality in her slender, poised stance. Painted deftly in an artistic vocabulary that draws heavily from the emotional subjectivity of expressionism, Guiragossian's work is alive with the "supremacy of feeling" that characterizes true modernism.

Saleroom notices

Please note that according to information received from the Paul Guiragossian Foundation the correct title of the present work is Salomé, it was executed in 1973 and was exhibited in STUDIO 27 Gallery, Beirut that same year. The work will be sold with a certificate of authenticity from the Paul Guiragossian Foundation. The quote mentioned in the above catalog note comes courtesy of the Paul Guiragossian Foundation Archives.

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- Modern & Contemporary Middle Eastern Art