PORTRAITS OF THE-NON-EXISTENT-BIRD. - BOUTROS AL-MAARI.

From 14 to 16 May 2020 - Museum. Institut du monde arabe.

  • MAARI, Book 1 + Book 2. Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird.

    Book 1.Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird, 2004. Original Artist book, with Claude Aveline's poem manuscript in Arabic. Cover and 22 pages painted by the artist, in a painted box, 40 x 30 x 5 cm. Donation Claude & France Lemand 2018. Museum, Institut du monde arabe, Paris. © Boutros Al-Maari and The Estate of Claude Aveline. Book 2. Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird, 2004. Original Artist book, with Claude Aveline's poem manuscript in French. Cover and 28 pages painted by the artist, 22, x 17 cm. in a painted box, 26 x 19 x 4,5 cm. Donation Claude & France Lemand 2018. Museum, Institut du monde arabe, Paris. © Boutros Al-Maari and The Estate of Claude Aveline.

  • MAARI, Small polyptych 1. Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird.

    Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird, 2015. Small polyptych 1. Mixed media on cardboard, 10 x 50 cm. Collection Claude and France Lemand. © Boutros Al-Maari. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

  • MAARI, Small polyptych 2. Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird.

    Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird, 2015. Small polyptych 2. Mixed media on cardboard, 10 x 50 cm. Collection Claude and France Lemand. © Boutros Al-Maari. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

  • MAARI, Book 3. Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird.

    Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird, 2018. Artist book, with poem manuscript in German. Painted pages under cover, 21 x 16 cm. Collection Claude and France Lemand. © Boutros Al-Maari and The Estate of Claude Aveline.

  • MAARI, Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird.

    Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird, 2020. Acrylic and collage on canvas, 115 x 90 cm. © Boutros Al-Maari and The Estate of Claude Aveline. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

  • MAARI, Book. Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird.

    Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird, 2018. Artist book in 8 pages, with the poem manuscript in German translation. Mixed media and collage on cardboard, 23 x 24 cm. © Boutros Al-Maari and The Estate of Claude Aveline. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

  • MAARI, Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird.

    Portrait of The-Non-Existent-Bird, 2020. Mixed media on canvas, 145 x 90 cm. © Boutros Al-Maari. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

PORTRAITS OF THE NON-EXISTENT-BIRD - BOUTROS AL-MAARI.
Claude Lemand.

The Birds of Boutros Al-Maari.

In the two hand­written and painted books he ded­i­cated to Claude Aveline’s Portrait de l’Oiseau-Qui-N’Existe-Pas in 2004, he wrote the poem in French and Arabic, painted all the pages of the books and put them in painted wooden boxes, like the pre­cious old boxes of Damascus.

The sto­ry­teller-bird of Al-Maari is the cen­tral figure of the meet­ings by night in the cafes of Damascus and the main cities of the Arab Middle East, whose heroic or face­tious tales kept going, night after night, an audi­ence of men and chil­dren. The iconog­raphy of these book is in the spirit of the pop­ular tra­di­tion of poetic fig­u­ra­tion of the paint­ings under glass or the illu­mi­nated Arabic manuscripts.

Claude Aveline’s poem inspired one again Boutros Al-Maari. In 2015, in two small nar­ra­tive and nos­talgic paint­ings, the bird becomes the symbol of lost love: a migra­tory but unfaithful bird. In 2018, he painted a book with the poem manuscript in its German trans­la­tion, the lan­guage of his new country of exile.

Copyright © Galerie Claude Lemand 2012.

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