Les Fleurs de Février

Marc Hérissé wrote in the French periodical La Gazette de l'Hôtel Drouot in 1998, 'This famous Lebanese painter born in 1926 reveals a total mastery in his works. Sometimes Bonnardian in his colour combinations, sometimes enhancing clay redness, he brilliantly plays with clashes that he constantly resolves harmoniously. Curiously, his style's unity is the result of the most mixed of techniques. Here we find shimmering broad strokes, over there pebble dashing as light as a bird's feathers, elsewhere delicate temperas on wood or on paper, somewhere else again colours that look as if they had been sketched out in pastels on the canvas. I am told that this painting, so very subtle, is abstract. I am ready to believe this, but I am not convinced of it. Constantly, insidiously, it flirts with figuration. This is especially true of Dunes with their clear turquoise blues that lead me to the sea, or of Fleurs de février whose delicate celadon recall springtime's sensual outburst. Constantly on the razor's edge, this painting with its oriental accents, might almost pass for pretty. Luckily it does not fall into that trap. It is quite simply beautiful.' (in Claude Lemand (ed.), Shafic Abboud, Paris, 2006, p. 356).