News

24 September 2015

FATIMA EL-HAJJ, THE SONG OF THE EARTH.

FATIMA EL-HAJJ, THE SONG OF THE EARTH. Recent Paintings.

Illustrated Spotlight, published by Art Bahrain, issue n° ab06, October 2015-February 2016.

Born in 1953, Fatima El-Hajj first graduated in 1978 from the Institut des Beaux-Arts at the Lebanese University in Beirut, and later from the Academy of Fine Arts in Leningrad. She then completed her studies from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Paris in 1983. She was awarded with the Picasso Prize in Madrid in 1985, and has been teaching in Beirut at the Institut des Beaux-Arts ever since. She has been regularly exhibiting her works since 1986 in Lebanon as well as in other Arab countries where she is well-known, such as Kuwait, UAE, Syria, Morocco and Qatar, but also in Europe, such as in Spain and France.

Fatima El-Hajj’s landscapes are inspired by the gardens and parks of the many cities she enjoyed and observed whilst travelling across Lebanon, Yemen, Morocco and France. Her palette and her memory preserve the liveliness of the shapes, colours and light from these places and their inhabitants. More often, her paintings are a reflection of her own garden which she had laid out in front of her studio in Rmaileh, similar to how Claude Monet created his garden in Giverny and made it the main subject matter for his paintings during the last thirty years of his life. Yet Fatima El-Hajj’s garden is much more modest and different by nature than that of the Impressionist master. She endlessly paints the countless facets of her interior garden filled with silence and beauty, a woman lost in her reading or contemplation, a couple enraptured by the music or small groups of people attending the village’s or city’s fairs. She likes to suggest that her paintings are an invitation for the viewer to seek for his own interior garden, a paradise which is within us and brings us serenity, beauty and enchantment. Fatima El-Hajj does not conceal her admiration for the painters Edouard Vuillard, Henri Matisse, and especially Pierre Bonnard, as well as the Lebanese and Parisian artist Shafic Abboud, who had been her teacher and whom she admired and respected. Fatima El-Hajj is a follower of this school of painting and she is very grateful to all these great masters who helped her find her own path. (Claude Lemand)

In her own particular way of capturing light and colour, Fatima El-Hajj introduces a breath of Lebanese air, that of sharing and of friendship, epitomised by coffee time, by the afternoon nap, by the neighbour’s visit, or by a pastoral lunch. The viewer falls into the dream of this daily happiness which is brought to life by Fatima El-Hajj’s paintbrush, as if to ward off the surrounding world’s frenzy and worries. As she explains, "I am a girl from the village, where friends and neighbours have preserved their welcoming warmth. That is our life in Lebanon, not the other one, that which is imposed upon us, full of conflicts and tensions". She rejects war and what it causes, even at an artistic level. Fatima El-Hajj is convinced that the artist’s vocation is to bring joy. A great success !
(Carole Dagher, Fatima El-Hajj ou le bonheur de peindre, in L’Orient Le Jour).

In her painting, there is an absence of concession, a seek for an inner world, a harmony born from conflicting feelings between tranquility, rebellion, dream and doubt. She paints on canvas or on panel, using oil or acrylic paints and her works are often of a large size. As a colourist, she does not neglect the effects of texture. The movement, light and shapes suggested in her paintings, beautifully merge together, sometimes bringing the work on the verge of abstraction.
(Blog of Thierry Savatier, Le Monde).

25 February 2024

Manabu KOCHI. Spring Artist.

2 November 2022

BAYA. Femmes en leur Jardin

13 March 2022

ALGERIA MY LOVE. Artists of the Algerian fraternity, 1953-2021 - Exhibition from March 18 to July 31, 2022.

24 June 2020

I.M.A.gination - CHRISTIE’S PARIS - Online Charity sale. From June 24 to July 16, 2020.

12 June 2020

THE ARTIST MAHJOUB BEN BELLA PASSED AWAY IN JUNE 11, 2020.

8 April 2020

The Circle of Friends of GUERMAZ pays tribute to Pierre REY.

4 March 2020

PHOTOS + VIDEOS FROM THE LEMAND DONATION.

16 February 2020

ZINEB SEDIRA WILL REPRESENT FRANCE AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2021.

30 August 2019

VLADIMIR VELICKOVIC PASSED AWAY ON AUGUST 28, 2019.

10 August 2019

KAMAL BOULLATA (Jerusalem, 1942 - Berlin, 2019) buried in his homeland JERUSALEM.

28 January 2019

DIA AL-AZZAWI, Bilâd al-Sawâd (Black Land) - LE MONDE, 28.01.2019

22 October 2018

A PASSION TO SHARE. The CLAUDE & FRANCE LEMAND DONATION of 1300 artworks to the Institut du monde arabe MUSEUM, Paris.

29 August 2018

NUIT BLANCHE 2018 - YOUSSEF ABDELKE - A DONATION TO FIGHT DEATH IN SYRIA. - Institut du monde arabe, Museum. - 6 OCTOBER 2018.

25 May 2018

ETEL ADNAN - Exhibition from June 15, to October 7, 2018. - ZENTRUM PAUL KLEE, Bern, Switzeland.

16 May 2018

ABDALLAH BENANTEUR, THE SONG OF THE EARTH. Retrospective-Tribute. Exhibition from June 9, to September 9, 2018.

1 March 2018

AZZAWI, SABRA AND SHATILA. Exhibition from April 11 to September 16. 2018. - Musée. Institut du Monde arabe, Paris.

4 February 2018

PICASSO, GUERNICA. - Musée national Picasso-Paris.

22 January 2018

PORTRAIT OF THE-NON-EXISTENT-BIRD. Maison des Arts, ANTONY.

14 January 2018

ABDALLAH BENANTEUR PASSED AWAY ON 31 DECEMBER 2017.

12 June 2017

TONDO INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION - City of Issoudun Museum - France.

7 August 2016

DIA AL-AZZAWI TO LAUNCH RETROSPECTIVE IN DOHA.

24 February 2016

SEGUÍ, PAINTING IN MIRRORS. Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch, ISSOUDUN. From 27 February to 22 May 2016.

30 September 2015

MAHJOUB BEN BELLA, WORKS ON PAPER. La Piscine Museum, Roubaix, France. 24 OCTOBER 2015 - 31 JANUARY 2016

24 September 2015

FATIMA EL-HAJJ, THE SONG OF THE EARTH.

18 September 2015

MANABU KOCHI . Art Paris Art Fair 2015 .

18 September 2015

KEVORK MOURAD . Art Paris Art Fair 2015 - Mucem 2015 .

18 September 2015

ABDALLAH BENANTEUR . Art Dubai Modern 2015 - Booth M7 .

27 February 2015

SHAFIC ABBOUD . The Armory Show 2015 + Art Dubai Modern 2015.

25 February 2015

THE AL-AZZAWI EPIC . New York. The Armory Show 2015.

7 November 2014

ETEL ADNAN, Writing Mountains. Museum der Moderne Salzburg. Retrospective, 15 Nov. 2014 - 08 March 2015.

1 September 2014

GERD LANGE DESIGN. In the Context of Serial production. 1962-2007.

3 July 2014

ISSOUDUN - Musée de l’Hospice Saint Roch - Conversation between Claude Lemand and Tom Laurent - Art Absolument - July 2014

21 May 2014

City of ISSOUDUN - PORTRAIT OF THE NON-EXISTENT-BIRD - Exhibition from 22 May to 31 August 2014 .

8 May 2014

ETEL ADNAN AND THE ARAB MODERNITY .

19 March 2014

YOUSSEF ABDELKE - 2 EXHIBITIONS IN PARIS : GRAND PALAIS + GALERIE CLAUDE LEMAND

9 March 2014

TONDO INTERNATIONAL - ART BAHRAIN - ART PARIS ART FAIR 2014

10 January 2014

SHAFIC ABBOUD, THE PROPHET .

28 October 2013

ABDALLAH BENANTEUR. The River and the Volcano. Text by Claude Lemand.

16 October 2013

BENANTEUR, Paintings. LA GAZETTE DROUOT. Exhibitions by Lydia Harambourg.

5 March 2013

Grand Palais - Art Paris Art Fair - C21 Galerie Claude Lemand - 27 mars - 1er avril 2013. Dia Al-Azzawi, Bilad al-Sawad & other works, 1978-2011.

15 November 2012

Claude Lemand. A Passion to share.

20 May 2011

Spring in Paris, next year in Beirut.

Copyright © Galerie Claude Lemand 2012.

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