Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, São Paulo
Acquired directly from the Artist
Thence by descent to the present owner

Exhibited:
São Paulo, X São Paulo Art Biennale, Lebanese Pavilion, 1969

Three important late 1940's views of Lebanon by Saliba Douaihy from a prominent family collection

A rare 1949 transitional Douaihy depicting Mar Gerges Church in Ehden, exhibited at the São Paulo Biennial in 1969

Saliba Douaihy:

"After my return to Lebanon I focused on drawing inspiration from the Lebanese landscape. I began to paint villages, houses, valleys, monasteries and villagers. I painted the landscape as it was, without alteration.

At the end of the 1930's I began reading about modern art. I used to look at modern paintings, which most people considered ugly, and found that in my eyes, they were beautiful. Gradually, I began to lean more and more towards these paintings, and I became certain that art is creation and not the imitation of nature. Nature is one thing and art, another.

I could prove to you by way of example, how after three or four paintings of the monastery of Qozhaya in Wadi Qadesha, the fourth and final painting would be abstract by comparison with the first one. This occurs by using fewer lines, and eliminating classical curves, and via a lack of detail"

— Saliba Douaihy

Painted in 1949, this luminous depiction of Mar Gerges Church in Ehden marks a critical moment in Saliba Douaihy's evolution from naturalistic landscape painting towards the abstraction that would come to define his mature career. Set in the village of Ehden in northern Lebanon, the composition captures the geometric rhythm of rooftops and the striking silhouette of the church set against ochre hills and lavender shadows. The work remains rooted in observation, but Douaihy simplifies form, flattens perspective, and organises colour into broad, almost planar zones - subtle cues of the stylistic breakthrough that lay just ahead.

This canvas would later gain renewed attention when it was selected for the 1969 São Paulo Biennial, affirming Douaihy's position within the global discourse of modernism. Exhibited alongside his later abstract works, it revealed the foundational aesthetic sensibility - a deep connection to light, architecture, and sacred space - that persisted throughout his practice. Here, Douaihy doesn't merely depict a village; he constructs a geometry of place, pointing to the visual language he would refine into abstraction in the 1950s and beyond. As such, this work is not just a rare early gem: it is a pivotal bridge in the story of one of Lebanon's most important modern painters.