Farid Aouad

Abstract

Farid Aouad (1924–1982) was a Lebanese painter who studied at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts and later continued his training in Paris. After returning to Beirut in 1951, he depicted scenes of daily urban life and exhibited his work with success. In 1959, he permanently relocated to Paris. Although Aouad briefly explored abstraction, his primary focus remained on figurative representations of urban crowds in cafes, streets, and metro stations. His distinctive style was characterised by simplified, isolated silhouettes, non-naturalistic colors, and visible, layered brushstrokes. He frequently reworked his compositions using various media, including pastel, oil, and charcoal. Despite persistent financial hardship and illness, Aouad continued to produce art until his death from cancer. The Sursock Museum later organised a posthumous exhibition to honor his contribution to Lebanese modernism.

Biography

Early Life and Studies in Beirut and Paris

Farid Aouad was born in 1924 in Maidan, a village in South Lebanon, where his father served as both mayor and grocer. In 1934, Aouad moved to Beirut with his parents, who relocated to the Lebanese capital city to manage a modest boarding house at the end of Gouraud Street, in the Gemmayzeh neighbourhood. The family faced increasingly difficult circumstances following the death of Aouad's father from typhoid fever in 1938. At the time, Aouad was a student at the Francophone Catholic school Collège La Sagesse; he never completed his secondary studies, dropping out in his last year.

Aouad took up painting soon after leaving school, taking informal lessons from a neighbour and sketching Beirut’s city streets and building façades from life. In 1943, he enrolled in the newly opened fine arts programme at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA), the first art school established in Lebanon, which had been founded as a music conservatory in 1937. Aouad studied alongside artists that would come to shape Modern art in Lebanon, such as Michel Basbous (1921–1981), Helen Khal (1923–2009), and Shafic Abboud (1926–2004). Their main tutor was the Lebanese landscape and portrait painter César Gemayel (1898–1958), a champion of Impressionism who did not impose his style upon his students. As the school’s curriculum left room for experimentation, Aouad and his classmates pursued their interest in exploring European movements, particularly Cubism and abstraction, and began integrating them into their practice.

Soon after completing his degree in 1947, Aouad obtained a scholarship from the Lebanese government to continue his studies in Paris, departing for the French capital the following year. At the time of his move, the city still held a privileged status among Lebanese artists, both as a centre for artistic training and a place to achieve international recognition. Aouad attended classes at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris (ENSBA) for one year, followed by three months at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ÉnsAD). He also frequented the studio of the French Neo-Cubist painter André Lhote (1885–1962). As was previously the case with César Gemayel, Aouad's professor at ALBA, there is no indication that he was influenced by Lhote's style.

Career beginnings in Beirut and move to Paris

Aouad returned to Beirut in 1951 and started painting scenes of the city’s daily life, especially downtown Beirut's bustling cafés, teeming souks, and busy port, all of which he had known since childhood, having grown up near the city centre. He exhibited several times in Beirut during the 1950s, with solo shows at venues such as the Fritz Gotthelf  gallery, eponymously named after the German interior decorator Fritz Gotthelf (1912–1984) who ran it in tandem with an associated furniture factory. Gotthelf showed modern art, especially German painters, Japanese prints, and the works of prominent Lebanese painters and rising local talents such as Aouad, Abboud, Elie Kanaan (1926–2009), and Aref El Rayess (1928–2005). Aouad also participated in group exhibitions, winning a prize for his contribution to the 1957 Salon de peinture et de sculpture, organised by the Lebanese Ministry of Education and the Fine Arts and held at the UNESCO headquarters in Beirut.

In 1959, Aouad relocated to Paris, where several of his contemporaries—including Basbous, Kanaan, and Abboud—would also subsequently establish their careers. Aouad and Abboud considered each other artistic rivals, yet they frequently met one another during their first years in Paris. Aouad found in the French capital not only opportunities to broaden his artistic knowledge and stay current with the latest developments in contemporary art but also the anonymity to observe and paint urban crowds. Aouad returned to Beirut at least twice, on the occasion of well-received solo shows lauded by the local press, including a solo exhibition in 1968 at Dar el-Fan, the important multi-cultural platform founded and run by Janine Rubeiz (1926–1992) from 1967 until 1992.

A Painter of the Urban Crowd

Aouad had a short abstract period influenced by Wassily Kandinsky and Jackson Pollock, exhibiting a non-figurative painting at the 1963 Salon des réalités nouvelles in Paris, but his interest in abstraction lasted no longer than two years. He soon returned to depicting his preferred subject, people observed in the places he frequented: social settings like bars and cafés; entertainment venues like the opera and the cinema; spaces of transience like city streets and metro stations. In every case, Aouad's figures take precedence over their surroundings. He tended to reinforce the contours of his subjects’ silhouettes using linear marks that structure the composition while eschewing recognisable landmarks or streets and relegating those architectural details that do appear in his paintings.

A self-proclaimed introvert who observed the crowd from a distance, Aouad tended to capture moments of close proximity between people in motion or gathered together. His figures, however, rarely engage in visible interaction and instead appear isolated from one another. And because Aouad reduces their distinguishing characteristics in his compositions, they also tend not to be individually identifiable: their bodies, simplified, elongated, and often defined by rapid, gestural brush strokes, are shown from behind or otherwise depicted without identifiable features; or his subjects’ faces are partially obscured, their eyes rendered as darkened spots or reduced to a single-coloured circle.

Technique and Artistic Approach

Aouad's use of unconventional framing and his attention to scenes of everyday life have been related to Edgar Degas and his colours and rendering of figures to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. More broadly, his work appears to be associated with different currents of Expressionism. However, Aouad developed his practice outside established movements and rejected any association with them. He drew from observation, then finished his paintings in his studio on Rue des Haies in Paris's 20th arrondissement, working slowly since he reworked his canvases repeatedly, driven by a demanding, self-critical approach. Aouad worked primarily in pastel, charcoal, and oil, using a combination of the three for smaller works and oil alone for larger paintings. He also produced numerous works on paper, a medium he had used extensively since his days at ALBA when, unable to afford art materials, he would draw on paper supplied free of charge by the academy.

Aouad developed a pictorial language based on an expressive use of colour and line, with compositions characterised by non-naturalistic colours, such as dominant pinks or yellows to depict the city, or monochrome renderings of urban scenes punctuated by contrasting accents. White also recurs throughout his work as a base or structuring colour. Line is likewise clearly present in Aouad's work, both in the contours of forms he captured on the spot, and in the gestural marks of his brush. When working on canvas, he layered multiple loose brushstrokes with varying degrees of transparency, sometimes blending paint directly onto its surface, creating a cumulative, textured surface that introduces a sense of movement to the composition.

Late Career and Posthumous Recognition

Despite the support of a small circle of friends and collectors, Aouad faced recurring financial hardship in Paris. He lived modestly, sometimes keeping warm in winter by frequenting the bars and metro stations that he painted. He fell ill in the mid-1970s, but continued to work, notably painting Brittany's seashore and sailors. Towards the end of the decade, he began to produce increasingly dark paintings in which the faces and figures of his subjects were further simplified.

Aouad passed away from cancer in 1982 and was buried in Paris at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. At the end of that year, Beirut's Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock Museum held an exhibition paying homage to Lebanese artists who had passed away since the beginning of the 1975 war, among them Aouad, Basbous, Jean Khalife (1923–1978), Hussein Badreddine (1939–75), Khalil Zgaib (1911–1975), and Ibrahim Marzouk (1937–1975). Since Aboud’s death, his close friend and gallerist, the Lebanese painter Odile Mazloum (1945–), formerly the proprietor of Galerie Alwane in Beirut, has overseen the management of his estate.

Bibliography

Akar, Mirèse. "Farid Aouad à Dar el Fan. Un peintre, un vrai" ["Farid Aouad at Dar el Fan. A Real Painter"]. L'Orient, 10 February 1968.

Bazzoun, Ahmad. "Tashkil. Al-maarad al-akhir lil-fannan al-rahel Farid Awwad at Alwan" ["Fine Arts. The Latest Exhibition of the Late Artist Farid Aouad"]. As-Safir, 13 June 1996.

Fani, Michel. Dictionnaire de la Peinture au Liban [Dictionary of Painting in Lebanon]. Paris: Editions de l'Escalier, 1998.

Hakim, Victor. “Farid Aouad à Dar el Fan" ["Farid Aouad at Dar el Fan"]. La Revue du Liban, 17 February 1968.

Menassa, May. "Farid Aouad, dernières œuvres" ["Farid Aouad, Last Works"]. Exhibition pamphlet. Beirut: Alwane Gallery, 1996.

Mirshak, Mira. “Lebanese Artist Feels More at Home in Paris.” The Daily Star (Beirut), 1971.

Tarrab, Joseph. "La Lutte avec la peinture" ["The Struggle With Painting"]. Exhibition pamphlet. Beirut: Alwane Gallery, 1996.

Tomb, Marie, et al. Art from Lebanon: Modern and Contemporary Artists, 1880–1975. Vol. 1. Under the direction of Nour Abillama. Beirut, Lebanon: Wonderful Editions, 2012.

Further Readings

Chahine, Richard, et al. Cent Ans d’Art Plastique au Liban, 1880–1980 [One Hundred Years of Plastic Arts in Lebanon, 1880–1980]. Vol. 2. Beirut: Imprimerie catholique, 1982.

Dagher, Alexandre. Al-aamal al-akhira lil-fannan al-tashkili Farid Awwad" [The Last Works of the Artist Farid Aouad"]. Arab Week, 10 June 1996.

D. A. "Farid Awad: 'Je fais des portraits d'ambiance.'" ["Farid Awad: 'I Paint Ambiances' Portraits.'"]. La Revue du Liban, 1971.

Harfouche, Nicole. “Un art de tendance académique, minutieux et précis: Exposition Farid Aouad à la Galerie 6" ["An Art with an Academic Tendency, Minutious and Precise: Farid Aouad Exhibition at Galerie 6"]. La Revue du Liban, 2008.

Khalaf, Colette. “Exposition – La Galerie 6, rue Abdel Wahab el-Inglizi, ouvre ses portes: Vagabondages en noir et blanc de Farid Aouad” [Exhibition – Galerie 6, on Abdel Wahab el-Inglizi street, Opens Its Doors: Farid Aouad's Journeys in Black and White"]. L’Orient-Le Jour (Beirut), 19 May 2008.

Khater, Nazih. "Al-rassam al-a'id min Baris. Awwad: lil 'insan al-jadid fann jadid" [The Painter Returning from Paris, Aouad: a New Art for a New Man"]. An-Nahar, 14 February 1968.

Liban – Le Regard des Peintres: 200 Ans de Peinture Libanaise (Lebanon: the Artists' View. 200 Years of Lebanese Painting). Exhibition catalogue. Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe and Liban Culture, 1989.

Mainguy, Jean-Louis, et al. L’Art blessé. Exhibition catalogue. Beirut: Fondation Audi, 2021.

"Vernissage des œuvres de Farid Awad à Dar el Fan" ["Opening of Farid Awad's Exhibition at Dar el Fan"]. Le Jour, 11 February 1968.