This inaugural retrospective volume unveils the œuvre of Lebanese artist Jamil Molaeb and marks a seminal moment in the appreciation of his artistic legacy.
Through a meticulous curation of his diverse works employing various media, encompassing drawings, sculptures, paintings, prints, and etchings, the aim of this publication is to recount Molaeb's artistic journey and secure his place within the history of Arab modern art.
Central to this endeavor are the never-be- fore-seen artworks that will provide readers with an explanation of Molaeb's creative evolution. While the texts in each chapter contains visual analysis, they are also based on primary documents such as exhibition reviews as well as personal interviews with the artist. Secondary sources, including books written by Molaeb as well as academic studies and articles on various subjects related to each chapter, were referenced.
Organized thematically rather than adhering strictly to a chronological framework, the structure of the book affords a nuanced exploration of Molaeb's multifaceted body of work. Each chapter is dedicated to a particular theme, providing a focused examination of the produced work.
Jamil Molaeb (born in 1948 in Baissour, Lebanon) began his artistic career in the 1970s after studying under renowned artists Chafic Abboud and Paul Guiragossian. In 1967, he won the 3rd prize in sculpture at the 7th Salon of the Sursock Museum. He studied in Algeria, obtained a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, and a doctorate in artistic education from Ohio State University. In 1989, he returned to Lebanon to teach at the Lebanese University and Lebanese American University of Beirut. Since 1966, he has held solo exhibitions in various countries and participated in art fairs. His works have been showcased in international museums, acquired by notable collections, and sold in international auctions. His work is permanently exhibited at Galerie Janine Rubeiz, and in 2015, he established the Jamil Molaeb Museum in Baissour, Mount-Lebanon.
Jamil Molaeb is a curious mixture of a thinker and mystic. He shows throughout his abstract work his interest in the Druze cabalistic tradition and the way it conflates notions of boundless space with divine light. His signature paintings conceive of the color field—the ultimate destination for an abstract painter—as a traditional landscape, and evokes through those minimal pictorial frameworks, the magic simplicity of miniatures and icons. In his large colorful paintings, constructed in a simple identical operation, symbols emerge out of their alphabet and bifurcate into solid architectural forms, creating uncanny aerial like views, operating often as cultural archetypes. There is also a place for genre painting, however executed in an expressionist style, while not shying away from the folklore element. In his woodcuts, Molaeb demonstrates a unique skill to converse between parallel techniques, temporalities and concepts: Resorting to a traditional technique, inherited from the Italian 15th century (coeval with the first oils on canvas), the artist deploys quintessential modernist strategies that would be easily read by the expressionist and post-expressionist painters of Europe, indubitably alerted by his bright palette combined with primal archetypes, characteristic of pre-classical art.
Jamil Molaeb kept on exhibiting canvases inspired as much by Western art history as by ancient Egyptian, Sumerian and Babylonian art. Not one to be confined within a single style, Molaeb easily switches from village scenes to minimalist compositions with squares of bright colours. When he paints a landscape, it is to celebrate the nature that surrounds him through the reproduction of the sensations and emotions it inspires him.
