Fateh Moudarres

Abstract

Fateh Moudarres (1922–1999) is considered one of the most prominent modernist artists in Syria, influencing contemporary Syrian art. He was also a short story writer and poet who explored philosophical visions about aesthetic concepts, time, human values, and nature. Moudarres’s connection to the land was rooted in a difficult childhood. At the same time, his interest in humanity stemmed from his observation of people's lives and his constant opposition to war and cultural destruction. He began with exercises in Realism and experimented with Surrealism before finally moving to Abstract Expressionism, the artistic style that encompasses most of his work. He was involved in political issues in his own way. His views were ingrained in the concerns of the people, yet he distanced himself from any ideology or movement.

Biography​​

Fateh Moudarres was born in 1922 in Hreitan, a village near Aleppo in northern Syria, near Turkey. His early childhood was not easy. After his father was killed, he moved with his mother and siblings to a Kurdish village in northeastern Syria. The harsh geography of the region and its Kurdish cultural heritage left an indelible mark on his visual memory. Moudarres completed his primary and secondary education in Aleppo. The Syrian artists Ghalib Salem (1910–1983) and Wahbi al-Hariri (1914–1994) were among his teachers. This was the beginning of his connection to art. In his early twenties, Moudarres was drawn to literature and studied English at the American School in Aley, Lebanon, where he was culturally influenced by his teachers, including the Lebanese poet Maroun Abboud (1886–1962). Moudarres worked briefly as an English teacher in Syria but soon turned to the visual arts. In 1947, he participated in the first Syrian Fine Arts Exhibition at Jawdat al-Hashemi High School (Madrasat al Tajhiz) in Damascus, an exhibition organised by the Syrian Ministry of Education (now the Ministry of Higher Education). That same year, he exhibited at the Arab Artists Exhibition in Beit Mery, Lebanon. In 1950, he held his first solo exhibition in Aleppo. In 1952, he participated with several paintings in art exhibitions held in the United States, Sweden, and Syria. His painting Kafr Janneh won first prize at the Damascus Exhibition that year and was added to the collection of the National Museum of Damascus. In 1954, he published a three-part study of art, presenting a concise history of the fine arts and a study of contemporary art criticism.

In the 1950s in Aleppo, some intellectuals were drawn to Surrealism, most notably the poet Orkhan Moyassar (Istanbul 1914–Aleppo 1965). Moudarres got to know their ideas, but Surrealism did not profoundly influence him. In the mid-1950s, he went to Rome to enrol in the Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1960. In Rome at the same period, other Syrian artists were pursuing their artistic education, including Mahmoud Hammad (1923–1988) and Louay Kayali (1934–1978). In 1960, Moudarres won first prize from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Following his return to Syria in 1961, he took up a teaching position at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus. His time teaching at the college coincided with that of the Italian Guido Larrigina (1909–1995), who was a professor there. Moudarres disagreed with Larrigina's method of encouraging students to adopt the abstraction directly.

On April 9, 1962, he co-authored, with the critic Abdul Aziz Alloun (1934–2011) and the artist Mahmoud Daadoush (1934–2008), The Artistic Manifesto for Visual Arts Scene in Syria, in which they addressed form, colour, and the artist's freedom. He also received the Gold Medal from the Italian Senate and an honorary award from the São Paulo Biennale in Brazil in 1963. In the early 1970s, he studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Moudarres contributed to the founding of the Fine Arts Syndicate (Fine Arts Association) in Syria, established in 1970. He became a member of the Union of Arab Plastic Artists upon its founding in 1973.

In 1977, he was appointed professor of higher studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus and served as head of the Artists Syndicate for 11 years. That same year, 1977, the former German ambassador to Syria, Rudolf Fischer (1912–1990), who had acquired a collection of Fateh's works, organised a collective exhibition in Bonn entitled Art from Syria Today, which featured works by Moudarres.

In the 1980s, he continued exhibiting in Syria and participating in events throughout the Arab world. In the autumn of 1995, the Institut du monde arabe in Paris, in collaboration with the Atassi Gallery, held a retrospective exhibition of his work, accompanied by the publication of the monograph catalogue: Moudarres.

In 1995, the three Syrian directors Omar Amiralay, Osama Mohammad, and Mohammad Malas released the film Fateh Moudarres. Philosophical phrases written or quoted by Moudarres adorned the walls of his studio.

In 1998, Moudarres discussed The Painting as a Literary Work with the poet Adonis (1930–date unconfirmed) at the Atassi Gallery in Damascus. This discussion was followed by an extended session, organised by Mona Atassi (1951–date unconfirmed), the gallery director, between the poet and the artist, to foster a deeper intellectual dialogue. This session resulted in a book titled Fateh and Adonis: Hiwar (Dialogue), which was published in 2009. Fateh Moudarres died in Damascus in 1999, leaving behind an artistic and intellectual legacy that influenced the Syrian art scene and subsequent generations.

Formal Analysis

Although many writings suggest that Fateh Moudarres was a surrealist in his early practice, the artist did not adopt its aesthetic principles, but rather its philosophical concept, unleashing the expression of elements through their content, regardless of their realistic form.

From the early 1960s onward, he established a distinct artistic identity, adopting an expressive, abstract approach, even when depicting figures and landscapes. His painting structures are characterised by a "chessboard" structure, as described by the artist and aesthetic researcher Asaad Arabi (1941–2025). The early contemplations of nature and his engagement with colours, shapes, lines, and the values of light, which he observed in the countryside, have marked his paintings. He sometimes used sand on the surfaces of his paintings, blending it with the paint. He depicted the land, with its soil, stones, and plants, to such an extent that it covered the entire canvas, sometimes obscuring the sky. Even in his depictions of people, we see that faces and clothing are sometimes indistinguishable from the earth and rocks. Furthermore, throughout his life, the artist clearly projected the concept of motherhood onto the earth, expressing it as a mother, as in his painting Safita the Mother, where the mother's face merges with the soil, representing her as a homeland.

With the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, the teacher was deeply affected and stated in one of the interviews, “The Lebanese war imprinted my artwork over fifteen years with a sense of tragedy; the reflections of the war appeared through the color and graphic composition of the painting.”

Without being religious, one of Moudarres's themes, evident in the titles of his works, is Christian and Islamic religious stories. He painted, among others The Last Supper in several versions in 1964, as if to condense time and express contemporary human suffering, rather than a literal depiction of Christ. His work Al-Buraq Searches for its Owner (1993) refers to Al-Buraq, the steed that carried the Prophet Mohammad during the Isra and Mi'raj (Night Journey and Ascension).

Moudarres drew inspiration from historical references in religion and their connection to the region, as seen in his painting Palm Sunday (1965), which is linked to the entry of Christ into Jerusalem in Eastern thought.

Indeed, the elements—from the suggestive titles of his works to the use of symbols within the paintings—reflect, alongside the artistic depth of the image, the artist's literary and linguistic intellect. He was also a poet and short story writer.

His poetry exhibited surrealist leanings, while his stories bore the hallmarks of critical realism, demonstrating, much like his paintings, a deep connection to the concerns of his society and a protest against human oppression. His published works include Studies in Contemporary Art Criticism (1945), a limited edition of his poetry collection The Eastern Moon on the Western Shore (1962, co-authored with the poet and novelist Sharif Khazendar), and a short story collection titled The Mint Branch (1981, published by the Arab Institute for Studies and Publishing, with an introduction by Said Houranieh). The collection The Time the Thing (الزمن الشيء)with the poet Hussein Raji was published in 1985. It is a reflection on the reality of man and society. After his death in 2001, Dar Ninawa published the book The Statuary Seller, which included stories from the Mint Stick and other previously unpublished works.

Bibliography

Alloun, Abdul Aziz, The Turning of the Sixties in the History of Contemporary Fine Arts in Syria (منعطف الستينات في تاريخ الحركة التشكيلية في سورية), Damascus, 2003.

Arabi, Asaad, Moudarres, Atassi Gallery and the Arab World Institute: Damascus and Paris, 1995.

Asalia, Nour, Fateh Moudarres: Aesthetics of the Syrian Land, in the catalogue of Shining in Your Days, Asian Cultural Center, South Korea, 2023

D'Antone, Ambra, Taking Time: Fateh Moudarres’ Works on Paper and Syrian Chronology between Modernity and Contemporaneity, The Journal: Atassi Foundation, 2023.

Hamarneh, Samar, How Fateh Moudarres Sees (كيف يرى فاتح المدرّس), Damascus, 1999.

MASA Archive of Modern Syrian Art, https://masaarchive.org/en/home/

https://www.atassifoundation.com/ar/features/ltl-b-m-lzmn-ml-fth-lmdriws-lwrqyw-wltrykh-lswry-byn-lhdth-wlm-sr

Moudarres, Fateh, Adonis, Fateh, Adonis. Hiwar – Sense and Intuition, Atassi Gallery, 2009.

Omar Amiralay, Osama Mohammad, and Mohammad Malas, Fateh Moudarres, Maram for Artistic Production, Sayyar for Artistic Production: Damascus, 1995

Huda, Ibrahim, Interview with Fatih al-Mudarris, As-Safir Newspaper, January 19, 1996, Link from the newspaper's archives : https://archive.assafir.com/ssr/807707.html

Further Reading

Lenssen, Anneka, Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria, California: University of California Press, 2020.

Porter, Venetia, Word Into Art: Artists of The Modern Middle East, London: British Museum Prints, 2006.

Shabout, Nada, Lenssen, Anneka, Rogers, Sarah, Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2018.