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拍品專文
Attracting a wide international following for his connections to both New York and Lebanese artistic circles, artist Nabil Nahas has dedicated himself to exploring painting. He produces visually captivating works with a range of influences including nature, that are incorporated within his prominent Fractal series that emulate the fora and fauna of the sea. His works also reference Islamic art with their abstract geometric and chromatic qualities. Approaching his works with a unique a unique interplay between Eastern and Western elements, Nahas utilises a unique combination of abstraction, realism and decorative arts where he experiments in monumental in size, striking colours and complex forms.
Nahas has produced a monochrome series during the mid to late 1980s of which this present work is part of, which is most striking in colour and delicate in its linear form. Facing a turning point in his artistic techniques, the artist began to focus on large fields of black pigment, and monochrome series, first painting in blacks with splashes of blues and reds, then moving to ochres and tarnished golds.
Completing his BFA from Louisiana State University in 1971, he later received his MFA at Yale University where he was exposed to a variety of artistic circles of the New York School at Yale during a critical juncture in art history’s abstract expressionist genre. Meeting artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and Larry Poons, Nabil Nahas would also learn under Al Held, who was part of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, noted for his rejection of the mainstream and his use of sweeping, fat brush slabs that occupy three-dimensional form of measureless space.
It is noted that his earlier monochrome works were created out of a result of the Lebanese Civil War, which began to heighten in 1982. Seen as momento mori of human life, these works are quietly imposing, their composition overwhelming in its sweeping brush strokes with ambiguous flurries of smaller strokes found within the painting, becoming weathered walls withstanding natural forces. The present work, although not adhering to the black monochrome works, can still be seen as deriving from them, with the artist experimenting in colour and form however utilising his newfound technique. ‘For the first time, Nahas invites us to contemplate paint as paint. No one extends this invitation more insistently than a monochrome painter.’ (C. Ratclif, Nabil Nahas, New York 2016, p. 55).
Nahas has produced a monochrome series during the mid to late 1980s of which this present work is part of, which is most striking in colour and delicate in its linear form. Facing a turning point in his artistic techniques, the artist began to focus on large fields of black pigment, and monochrome series, first painting in blacks with splashes of blues and reds, then moving to ochres and tarnished golds.
Completing his BFA from Louisiana State University in 1971, he later received his MFA at Yale University where he was exposed to a variety of artistic circles of the New York School at Yale during a critical juncture in art history’s abstract expressionist genre. Meeting artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and Larry Poons, Nabil Nahas would also learn under Al Held, who was part of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, noted for his rejection of the mainstream and his use of sweeping, fat brush slabs that occupy three-dimensional form of measureless space.
It is noted that his earlier monochrome works were created out of a result of the Lebanese Civil War, which began to heighten in 1982. Seen as momento mori of human life, these works are quietly imposing, their composition overwhelming in its sweeping brush strokes with ambiguous flurries of smaller strokes found within the painting, becoming weathered walls withstanding natural forces. The present work, although not adhering to the black monochrome works, can still be seen as deriving from them, with the artist experimenting in colour and form however utilising his newfound technique. ‘For the first time, Nahas invites us to contemplate paint as paint. No one extends this invitation more insistently than a monochrome painter.’ (C. Ratclif, Nabil Nahas, New York 2016, p. 55).