Footnotes

• Fateh Moudarres, one of Syria's foremost painters, went through a variety of styles in the course of his career, combining (as he admitted himself) elements of expressionism, surrealism and abstraction. In this typically striking work we see the combination of vibrant palette and the figurative with the near-abstract. Underlying these stylistic traits is the emotion felt by the artist and which is expressed in the title of this painting: we should not perhaps attempt to over-interpret its meaning, but implicit in much of Moudarres' work is his feeling towards his mother, with whom he had an especially close connection after the murder of his father when Moudarres was two years old. As a result of this experience the group of statuesque figures in the present work, and found in many of his paintings, expresses ideas of communal association and the protection afforded by the family.