Buy Me A Tree For the Season
Hussein Madi | Nabil Nahas | Hanibal Srouji | Mohammad El Rawas | Nizar Daher | Wassim Al Saadi | Fat yat Bahmad | Loulia
“As we approach the festive season, it is said that the best gift is giving. ‘Buy Me A Tree For the Season’ has been curated with original masterpieces by established and emerging artists that have the same theme: trees.
This is the debut group show organised by the Young Collector Sale and Galerie Janine Rubeiz, to showcase a selection of original works and limited edition prints by artists Hussein Madi, Nabil Nahas, Hanibal Srouji, Mohammad El Rawas, Nizar Daher, Wassim Al Saadi, Fatat Bahmad, and Loulia.
The Young Collector Sale (YCS) is a platform created to encourage young collectors to buy and collect original works and limited prints by artists at affordable prices through auctions, exhibitions, and online promotion.
YCS focuses on talented artists that have yet to be properly appreciated.”
NABIL NAHAS
Born in Beirut in 1949, Nabil Nahas earned his M.F.A. at Yale University in 1973, and divides his time between New York and Beirut. His most recent solo museum exhibition was “Perpetual Energy ” at the Beirut Exhibition Center in Beirut, Lebanon (2010). Nahas represented Lebanon in the 25th Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil (2002), and his work was included in “Glasstress 2011,” a Collateral Event of the 54th Venice Biennial, and in “Glasstress: New York” at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York (2012). Nabil Nahas’s work is in museum collections, including that of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Tate Modern, London; Flint Institute of Arts, Flint; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; and the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Nahas had his first solo show at Sperone Westwater in 1997 and subsequent exhibitions in 1999, 2005, and 2013.
Drawing inspiration from the decorative patterns of Islamic art and the American abstract painting of the mid 20th century, painter and mixed-media artist Nabil Nahas makes innovative use of organic materials, including seashells and starfish, which he casts in acrylic paint and mounts on a support (typically canvas). His works have an all-over composition suggestive of biological growth and the patterning of nature, as in Full Spectrum (1999). In his more recent paintings, including Untitled (2007), Nahas has introduced imagery referencing the trees and other plant-life of his native Lebanon.
HUSSEIN MADI
Born in 1938, Madi is a painter, sculptor and printmaker. He studied painting, sculpture and printing in Beirut, at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts and in Rome at the Accademia di Belle Arti. He lived between these two cities between 1973 and 1986. In Rome, he did advanced research on Arabic cultural heritage and on Egypt. He went back to Lebanon in 1986 where he taught sculpture and engraving at the Institute of Fine Arts, Lebanese University and from 1958 to 1962, at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. He has been exhibiting in Europe since 1965. His art has been showcased at the British Museum, the Venice Biennale, and Tokyo’s Ueno Museum.
NIZAR DAHER
Nizar Daher is an eclectic and innovative artist serving as the Director of External Relations in Russia, Near and Far East for the Saliba Douaihy Committee for Cultural Affairs. Mr. Daher also serves as the President of the Lebanese Foundation of Art. The artist has exhibited in more than twenty three exhibitions in Lebanon and overseas. In 2007, the Lebanese Ministry of Telecommunications published a Memorial Postal Stamp representing his painting “Tilal” which was acquired by “The Hermitage” International Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2018, his work “Sunset”, was also published as a stamp.The painting was acquired by “The National Art Museum of China” (NAMOC), Beijing in 2011.
FATAT BAHMAD
Fatat Bahmad is a Lebanese painter, born in 1973 in Beirut, Lebanon. She spent most of her childhood in Kfarmelki, where the virgin nature of the village affected her talent.
In 1990 she joined the Institute of Fine Arts at the Lebanese University in Beirut, Lebanon, and graduated with a BA in painting in 1994. In 1995 she started teaching art at local schools. In 2004 she held her first individual exhibit in Lebanon. In 2006 she enrolled at The Institute of Oriental Letters, University Saint Joseph, Lebanon, and graduated with an MA degree in Education in 2010.
Fatat Bahmad is currently living and working between her village Kfarmelki, and Beirut.
Fatat held 6 solo Exhibitions, the very last one took place in October 2020. She also participated in many group Exhibitions.
Fatat participated in some Special Art Work activities between Lebanon, France, and Germany during the period 2002-2004.
MOHAMMED EL RAWAS
Born in Beirut in 1951, El Rawas studied painting at the Institute of Fine Art of the Lebanese University, and graduated in 1975 with honors receiving the Lebanese University scholarship to study abroad. The year of his graduation marked the beginning of the civil war in Lebanon, leading the artist to stop painting and to leave his country to Morocco where he stayed for two years in Rabat, teaching art and resuming painting. He returned to Beirut in 1979 to hold his first solo show, before joining the Slade School of Fine Art in London in the same year. Upon his return to Beirut in 1981 with a Masters Degree in printmaking, he started his academic career at the Lebanese University and the American University of Beirut, that lasted for 27 years.
Since 1979 El Rawas has held 12 individual exhibitions in Beirut, London and Dubai and has participated in more than 40 international art biennials and exhibitions in the UK, USA, Norway, Tunisia, Brazil, Japan, Kuwait, France, Netherlands, Egypt, UAE, Poland and China. In these international shows he won five prizes and honorable mentions including, in 2007, the award of the Alexandria Biennale for Mediterranean Countries, for his first installation and video art piece. His work is found in many museums and public collections in Lebanon, Tunisia, Iraq, Jordan, UAE, Norway and the UK.
WASSIM AL SAADI
Wasim Al Saadi was born in 1974 in Damascus to a Palestinian refugee family in Syria. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1998 and a postgraduate diploma in 2004 from Damascus University. He received a master’s degree in project management in 2009 from the University of Wales.
AL Saadi worked between 1999 and 2014 in the oil and gas sector and held several positions in international companies. In 2014 he shifted to humanitarian aid work in the relief of refugees, traveling among Lebanon, Ukraine and Iraq.
At the beginning of 2021, AL Saadi devoted himself to work on researching the shape of language, specifically the form of language of thought, and their relationship to plastic art.
HANIBAL SROUJI
Born in Lebanon in 1957, Srouji lives and works between Beirut and Paris. He holds a master’s degree in Fine Arts from Concordia University in Canada (1987). He had held different teaching positions at universities in the United States, Canada and was teaching at the Sorbonne, in Paris, before joining the Lebanese American University in 2010; where he holds, today, the position of Chairperson of the Art & Design Department, as Associate Professor of Practice.
He has held numerous personal and collective exhibitions, namely “Into the clouds”, at the Singapore Art fair and “The Mac International first open arts prize” in Belfast, Ireland, in 2014. He was featured at the “Abu-Dhabi Art” and “Art14 London.” His work has been acquired by prominent public and private collections, such as the “Alcan Collection” in Canada, the “Carmignac Foundation” in France. In 2013, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, representing him in Lebanon, published a book titled: “Hanibal Srouji: painting fire, water, earth and air.” He is also represented in by June Kelly Gallery in New York and Galerie Eulenspiegel in Basel.
LOULIA
Born in 1984 in KSA, she currently lives in Beirut where she draws her inspiration for her AUB series. Her recent works revolve around roses deconstructed in various compositions using oil on canvas.
The exhibition will be on view until January 7, 2023.
Buy Me A Tree For the Season
Location: Galerie Janine Rubeiz
Duration: 7 December 2022 – 7 January 2023