User:Zaki abdulal/sandbox

Toufic Abdul-Al (Arabic: توفيق عبد العال‎‎ twfyq ʿbd ālʿāl; October 3rd, 1938 – July 7th, 2002) was a pioneer in the Palestinian Fine Art Movement.

Early Life
Toufic Abdul-Al was born in Acre October 3, 1938. His father was a grain and butter wholesale and retail dealer. Palestine at the time was staying in a rebellion state, revolutionists were the masters of the situation and people had to choose between blood or money. The house he lived in Arce was an old three-storey house with ornamented ceiling and an ivory staircase overlooking the sea. On the third storey, there were high copper beds. Inside the house were arches, old windows and ornamented red brick tiles on the roof, all this had given him a background influenced greatly by eastern decor and interior decoration concepts. He used to go down to the western beach in Acre where he watched the fishermen and envied them for their “liberation” from the desk and the blackboard. Their big nets were always interesting and seemed attractive to him. He enjoyed listening to their songs, and watching the reflection of their red boats on the blue water of the sea. These scenes took a large place in his work in the sixties, especially during the “Blue stage”. At the school in Acre, his arts teacher, George Fakhouri, arranged an exhibition of Toufic’s paintings when he was only 9 years of age. His paintings were in watercolour and coloured chalk. Among the paintings was a black woman carrying a bunch of jasmine, and whom the pupils recognised as the woman living next to their school.

Nature 1960-1980
His relation with the school had an inimical nature; he used to skip school except for the art lessons and sport. He found refuge among the woods and hills in Broumana, Lebanon.

Exile had added to his rich experience and thus formed the first of its methodical features. He rediscovered the moods of meditation he had known on the Western shore of Acre. Throughout his long exhausting and uneasy journey, the artistic reality always presented its crisis under two main titles: This explains why experimentalism was the dominant method in Abdul-Al’s style. It is also clear and deliberate that he neglected the proportion and perspective in his works. It is not just a result of design but also of the experimental search for new forms which preserve the three dimensions: depth, solidity, and distance.
 * The recent emergence of the Palestinian plastic art and the absence of the link between the artist and his denied homeland.
 * The weakness of the prevailing stylistic streams which attempted to reach cohesion between creativity and the ongoing struggle in the Middle East.

Through depth as a distance effective having umbra and light, he came close to the impressionists, and his umbrae became colourful. From the painting “Flowers” – Burmana exhibition in 1963, where strokes of his brush intersect with the dotting and the colour lumps, to “The Song of Spring”, and “The Assassination of Spring” in 1967 with its sculpturist strokes. Toufic Abdul-Al has confirmed his stand in the face of the classic, academic and romantic schools and has looked for the elements of his artistic personality within a framework of a more comprehensive experimentation with other schools and tendencies.

The Revolution
In the period between 1967 – 1971, Toufic Abdul-Al held two exhibitions which contained 78 oil paintings, one of which was Al-Karama exhibition (48 paintings) in Beirut in 1968 and the other was a clear tendency towards the lumps, and a new shift of the subject, which made Abdul-Al the artist of the revolution during the stage of its renewed launching after the June 1967 aggression.

During the Civil War, he did not give up his art and tools; his paintings became popular and more dramatic. Abdul-Al’s paintings were a direct dialogue concerned with the Palestinian cause. His dialogue did not fall into the trap of photography, or portraiture.

'Al-Watan' newspaper said about that stage: "Toufic Abdul-Al is one of the most outstanding artists who did not stop, even for a moment, dealing with brush and colour throughout the war. We can even say that his precious paintings have been moving in harmony with the political developments. " In his work, the cause is reflected through solid lines, dark dancing colors, and massive bodies solid like rock.

In "Parade of Martyrs" and "Dignity", the bodies are erected like sculptures and transformed in a demonstrational funeral or dance of war to the position of glorifying martyrs thus making a mockery of attempts at annihilation of the Palestinian revolution.

After the repetitive crimes against the Palestinians civilians, the refugee camps were no longer a safe place, and there was no point to lie in wait. He refused to submit, and this was clear in his work 'The March'.

He questioned peace sarcastically; injured peace, and the dove spilled blood on the barbed wire.

In 1969, he painted the children of the martyrs in the "Eyes of Rifles” according to 'The Times' magazine's issue of December 26, 1969. Abdul-Al was able exploit the Palestinian cause, under the cover of the children's innocence and familiar eyes. His style can be summarized as follow:

Replacement of the freedom fighter by a horse, or put the two together, as in the paintings of 'Sails in Sky, Chapter of the Palestinian History, The Launch, The Giant and Dawn, Horses Driven to the Guillotine, The Path of the Revolution, and The Fall of the Knight'. And from that stage on; the horse became dominant in his works.


 * The use of arabesques in calligraphy was expressive.
 * Borrowing the legendary atmosphere for men without heads in the paintings of 'The Massacre, The Separation of Palestinian History, and Our Chests Courts Spears.
 * Introduction of "sun" to most boards during this stage, a witness, without losing color space.

Suphism 1956-1966
All the works he achieved during this stage were influenced by two contradictory misgivings which he fully lived through; Sufism and the nightwalkers.

He used to run to the hill to spend some hours with his friend; father Sadir, an artist and head of the monastery who had a studio in the church which contained hundreds of paintings. Together sipping vintage wine, they talked about philosophy, art and life.

The opposite of father Sadir was Toufic Abdul-Al’s friend in Broumana School, Isam Rafi who had dozens of paintings about death, calamity and destruction, although he never exhibited any of them. His personalities were a strange and terrific mummy. In this atmosphere, Toufic Abdul-Al painted ‘The Cross’ in quite a few occasions. In September 1963, Toufic Abdul-Al held an oil painting exhibition which contained 24 paintings at the Fine Arts Fair in Broumana, Lebanon. In 1966, and under the supervision of The Lebanese Artists Association for Painting and Sculpture in Beirut, he showed his water colour works of ten years (1956-1966). The exhibition included 48 water colour works. Apart from the two exhibitions, there had been paintings of a similar character, coming under the heading of the blue period (oil) in addition to some other paintings.

The Blue Stage 1966 - 1972
Throughout his childhood, Abdul-Al was fond of the reflection of the red boats on the blue sea. It is obvious that the violet can be produced by mixing the red with the blue. And as it is said, “the colours which are mixed by the eyes have a greater effect than the ones made by the mixture of the paints.” Abdul-Al had a long personal experience with violet, from the window of his house in Acre, he could see the colour violet on the surface of the sea at sunset. As for Abdul-Al, his romanticism in this stage, whether in its attraction to the past in Acre, or in its attraction to nature of the romanticism of the subject and the impressionism and romanticism of the plastic. Between 1966 – 1972, Toufic Abdul-Al produced, in addition to the water colours, 34 oil paintings which were dominated by violet – dark blue-blue. These were given the name “The Blue Stage”. In shade and height, he presented three styles of umbra: In the space, he extended plain and wide areas, with smaller ones between which he put acute colour lines. All this was done in an obstruction of nature, and surrealism of dreaming unrestricted formations.
 * Cores as a height,
 * Reflection of the shade of the formations on the surface of water as long strokes.
 * The shade and light of the man running in the painting.

The Blue Stage became a field in which he planted the lightness of the colour; the flat wide plains, the ornamented spaces, the abstraction of nature and strong lineation.

Lineation and Sculpture
This distinction was not confirmed to the oil paintings. For what Abdul Al had achieved in lineation and sculpture was equal to what he achieved in painting. His distinctive lineation, which carries its one character, had become a new sign in the graphic art regarding sceptre-which he calls an interesting game he achieved a big progress in when he introduced into it ornamentations and fed it with colours. Most outstanding of his sculpture works are: Fertility, A Baghdadi, The Urn Carrier, A Girl from Bethlehem, and A Girl from Ramallah which he exhibited in both Beirut and Damascus.

Key Exhibitions

 * 1958: Participated in the Annual Spring Exhibition sponsored by the Lebanese Ministry of Education & fine Arts.
 * 1962: Presented his first private exhibition (24 oil paintings) in Aley, Lebanon.
 * 1963: Held a private exhibition at Fine Arts Hall in Brumana, Lebanon.
 * 1966: Under the supervision of The Lebanese Artists Association for Painting and Sculpture in Beirut, he showed his water colour works of ten years; 1956-1966. The exhibition included 48 water colour works.
 * 1972: Held an exhibition of 80 oil paintings in Baghdad, Iraq.
 * 1976: Held an exhibition of 24 oil paintings depicting Tal El Zaatar Palestinian Refugee camp in Beirut.
 * 1982: Held an exhibition at Dar Al-Karama Gallery in Beirut, Lebanon.

Professional Memberships & Awards

 * 1960: Founding Member of Lebanese Artist Association.
 * 1969: Founding Member and Secretary of the The Palestinian Plastic Artist Union.
 * 1970: Granted the Soursouk Museum Award in Lebanon.
 * 1970: Granted the Lotus Award in Moscow, Russia.
 * 1971: Member of The Single Dimension Group, Baghdad, Iraq.
 * 1973: Founding Member of the People’s Gallery for Plastic Art in Lebanon.
 * 1980: Member of the Arab Plastic Artists Union, and the Palestinian Writers Society.
 * 1991: Granted the Naji El Ali Shield Award by the Syrian Culture Ministry, Syria.