Tammam Azzam

Born in Damascus, Syria in 1980, Tammam Azzam received his artistic training from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Damascus with a concentration in oil painting. Alongside a successful career as a painter in Syria, Azzam was a prolific graphic designer, an experience that would inform his digital media work after relocating to Dubai with the start of the country’s conflict.

The initial phase of Azzam’s work was distinguished by a ‘hybrid form’ of painting with applications of various media that allowed him to arrive at tactile interactions between surface and form that multiply as compositions evolve. These semi-abstract works use unconventional materials such as rope, clothespins, and other found objects in order to accentuate the depth, texture, and space of laboured picture planes, creating a visible tension. Although outwardly different in appearance, the series that resulted from these early experiments were inspired by the artist’s changing perceptions of specific urban environments.

 

 

 

 

Following the start of the uprising in Syria, Azzam turned to digital media and graphic art to create visual composites of the conflict that resonated with international viewers. These widely distributed works are informed by his interest in the interventionist potential of digital photography and street art as powerful and direct forms of protest that are difficult to suppress. In early 2013, Azzam made worldwide headlines when his Freedom Graffiti print went viral on social media.

 

Recently, he has returned to painting with Storeys, a series of monumental works on canvas that communicate the magnitude of devastation experienced across his native country through expressionist compositions of destroyed cityscapes. Chronicling the current state of his homeland, Azzam delves into a cathartic exercise of reconstruction, storey by storey. Alongside these new paintings, he has produced a significant body of giclée prints and installations that depict the facets of cities through similar themes.

 

Azzam has contributed to large-scale international exhibitions such as the FUU-Street Art Festival, Sarajevo (2015); Vancouver Biennale, where he was in residence (2014); FotoFest Biennial (2014), Houston; Dak’Art: Biennial of Contemporary African Art, Dakar (2014); Alexandria Biennale (2014); and the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (2013).

 

In recent years, Azzam has participated in solo and group exhibitions at such venues as Künstlerverein Walkmühle, Germany (2016); Columbia University, New York (2016); Ayyam Gallery - 11 Alserkal Avenue, Dubai (2016); Banksy’s Dismaland, Weston-super-Mare, United Kingdom (2015); Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice (2015); Framer Framed in de Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam (2015); Forum Factory, Berlin (2014); Lena & Roselli Gallery, Budapest (2014); Liquid Art House, Boston (2014); Rush Arts, New York (2014); Busan Museum of Art, Seoul (2014); 1x1 Art Gallery, New Delhi (2014).

 

In 2016, Azzam received an artist fellowship at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study in Delmenhorst, Germany. 

 

Hazem Alhamwi

 

Hazem Alhamwi (Damascus, 1980) is a director and producer from Syria, currently living in Berlin. He started his artistic career as a painter, having studied Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts. After participating in a few exhibitions on comics art, he decided on a slight career switch and enrolled in the High Academy of Theatrical Arts, where he discovered his love of cinema. The Arab Institute for Films was the starting point of his life as a filmmaker and producer.

 

 

Preben Hornung, 22.7.1919-3.8.1989, painter.

He visited both kunsthåndværkerskolen and the Art Academy in Copenhagen, in some years in the 40s, he went with K. Iversen and A. Jørgensen, but he found himself not in the correct place and characterized the later years at the Academy as "wasteful". The debut took place at the artists ' autumn exhibition in 1947. At the time cultivated Preben Hornung realistic motifs, landscapes, Garden pictures, interiors with figures and scenes from the city's outskirts, etc., and the method of painting was greatly influenced by the French late impressionism, especially Pierre Bonnard. 

A radical turnaround in the mode came in 1948 when he painted on the steel strip mill in Frederiksværk. From now on, the pictures were abstract constructive and based on a highly simplified colour grouped around the black/white. In the early 1950s  softened the straight constructive style, and a greater pictoresque expansion occurred after he found Langebro as motif, later played an railway booms and crossings in his motif, and the picturesque world language freede gradually, to motive mapping almost fell out altogether in the ' 60s, and development then moved around a lyrically picturesque language with much more finicky and limited use of shapes and colors.

From 1977 began Preben Hornung to paint portraits, and among his 30 portraits he painted, among other things portraits of Queen Margrethe II, 1981, 1983 and 1985.

In addition to great diligence on the painting area put Preben Hornung much emphasis on exploiting his talent in other visual art forms. Something of a breakthrough work was the great stained glass (12 x 14 m) which he made to sugar mills by refineries, administration building in Copenhagen in 1958, but besides this made Preben Hornung, a number of other decorations, stained glass at the technical school, Tomsgårdsvej, Kbh., 1966-67 and Haderslev katedralskole, 1973, a mosaic of Skanderborg municipality school, 1969, as well as picturesque decorations: City Hall of Rødovre Town Hall, 1959, student House at Aarhus University , 1964 (moved 1973) and frederiksværk County high school as well as several others.

Another important field of activity for Preben Hornung was scenography. From the mid-' 60s, he worked diligently with decorations for the theatre performances as Salome and Boris Godunov (both the Royal Theatre, 1966) and The marvelous mandarin (the Royal Theatre, 1967) as well as a host of other performances. For Dario Fos archangels never makes a contrivance (Gladsaxe Theatre, 1970) made h. decorations that prompted the critic Jens Kistrup to name him "the country's fanciest and most flexible Theater painter".

On the exhibition front selected Preben Hornung also his extensive artistic activity, among other things. by retrospective exhibitions in the Funen art museum Odense 1966 art and Art Association in Kbh. 1976, but it has also been to numerous exhibitions abroad. Preben Hornung is bulky represented in our art museums and public collections.

Franciska Clausen

Franciska Clausen, 7.1.1899-5.3.1986, painter. Born and raised in Aabenraa as the city was German, received his artistic education in Germany 1916-17 where she studied in Weimar at the Grossherzogliche Kunstschule, and 1918-19 at Frauenakademie in Munich. 1920, she came to the Academy of fine arts in Copenhagen.

After these studies she came in closer contact with the contemporary modern art when she studied in His 1921-22 Hofmanns atelier in Munich, and even more so by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy acquaintance with, one of the constructionist art leaders. In Munich she had already 1921 painted spontaneistiske, abstract watercolors, now she worked under Moholy Nagys-guide with constructionist exercises and paintings in a sober, simple, realistic style. From 1924-25, she worked in Paris at the Académie Moderne Léger Fernand, and his art had a decisive influence on her work, though her photos are less figurative than learn the master's.

1924 exhibited Franciska Clausen with Otto Carlssund and Erik Olson in Paris at an exhibition of Playing and his Scandinavian students. Towards the end of the twenties she received impulses from the abstract, "neoplasticistiske" direction and exhibited with the group "Cercle et Carré 1930" which, inter alia, Piet Mondrian was participating. A separate exhibition she got first 1932 in Copenhagen.

When Francisk Clausen not during her stay abroad had her own Studio, many of her visual art ideas only maintained in gouache and water colours while the paintings with these motifs in the 1950s and 1960s was to first. For many years worked Francisk Clausen in Åbenrå isolated from the Danish artistic life with the execution of the portrait bookings as bread work. A retrospective exhibition of her work in 1962, organized by the Sydslesvigs Danish art society, and Art Association Exhibition of her paintings and gouaches 1964 created a new interest in her art. She received the Tagea Brandt 1966 scholarship and from 1974 a scholarship from the Danish Arts Foundation, from the 1979 lifetime performance.

Artwork by Franciska found, among other things. in The Royal engraving collection, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Skive museum, Tønder museum, Åbenrå museum, Funen art museum of art, the Museum at Sønderborg Castle, Trapholt Museum of, which has a separate Department with her works, ARoS. Decorating: Mosaic on the town square in Albertslund (the Danish Arts Foundation). Portraits, inter alia, in the people's home, Åbenrå. Portrait of Queen Margrethe II, 1977, Queen Ingrid 1980.

The article derives from 3. Edition of the Danish biographical lexicon, published 1979-84.

Ejler Bille

Ejler Bille, Ejler Bille , 6.3.1910-Danish painter, graphic artist, 01.05.2004, sculptor and poet.

 

 

As one of the pioneers of abstract painting in Denmark was Ejler Bille a 1900-t's most important Danish artists. He graduated from Birkerød State school, where in 1929 he met the painter v. Bjerke Petersen.

1930-31 he was a student at the Art-Craft shoe, where also Richard Mortensen went. Bille worked at this time with wooden sculptures and debuted at K.E. in 1931.

Together with Richard Mortensen he experienced on a trip to Berlin in the same year the current abstract art, especially the works of Kandinsky and Jean Arp. These impressions and getting together with Bjerke-Petersen, who had just returned from a year of study at  Bauhaus school in Germany, got in 1932 after just one semester to Bille to abandon Bauhaus.

In 1933, he held together with Bjerke-Petersen, his first exhibition and showed here also paintings. The sculptures revolved around an abstract expression, Maar (1931) and Walkers Form (1933/36, Statens Museum for Kunst). With a simple, symbolic characters character and color position reflected the paintings clearly the foreign pioneers Kandinsky, Hans Arp and Joan Miro.

 

 

 

Ejler Bille exhibited together from 1934 with Bjerke-Petersen and Richard Mortensen in the abstract-surrealist group Linien and they published a magazine of the same name. From ca. 1935 stood Mortensen and Bille in opposition to Bjerke-Petersen and Wilhelm Freddie, as they maintained that the surreal content had to be given a non-figurative design. 'S works prægedes after a stay in Paris in 1937 by a new and imaginative power similar to that in the years prior had dominated the sculptures.

 

 

"Komposition"  painted in Paris in 1938 (Holstebro Art museum), marks the spontaneous gesture and show's affiliation to the circle of expressive abstract artists in Denmark. The line held his last exhibition in 1939, and the following year became a member of the Beetle Corner  and Høstudstillingen. During the war years he took part in the work around the periodical  Helhesten and he painted a large number of "mask images". It is essential in this context that the mask as narrative and partly exotic motif no importance was given for Beetle, only as picture signs of surface.

Ejler Bille Picasso published in 1945. Surrealism. Abstract art, a collection of articles on contemporary art, also outside Europe. His insistence on the importance of an eternal art in contrast to modernism's idea of an increasingly avant-garde ratio tend towards a reorientation.

Inter alia took the Beetle after the two legendary Cobra exhibitions (1949 and 1951) distance from the movement's deliberately experimental and international trend, such as Jorn  profiled the. With such attitudes moved Beetle itself at certain points outside the beaten path in post-war Danish art.

 

 

He was thus in 1951 to form Marts Udstillingen, a circle of both abstract and figurative working artists. A clear natural spillover from the war years put its mark on both color and form awareness in his painting. His works from this time also got a strong rhythmic and arabeskagtig intensity, where they stand as image characters of reflective musical lightness.

 

 
 
Dylan's many foreign trips, in particular to the Mediterranean area and to East Asia (Bali) together with his wife, painter Agnete T., became increasingly a factor for him.

 

Journeys over the years have set themselves clear traces in his work, which also includes poems and graphic work and Commisions to, among other things. Danmarks Tekniske Højskole in Labrador (1966-68).

 

 

Other works can be seen on most Danish art museums. After the March the exhibition's resolution was Beetle in 1982 Member of den frie udstilling. He received the  Eckersbergs price   1960, Thorvaldsen medal 1969 and  Eugene medal    1987

Sonja Ferlov Mancoba

 

 

 

 

Sonja Ferlov Mancoba

As a student in the newly created arts and crafts school class met Sonja Ferlov Mancoba painter (1911-1984) in 1931 Ejler Bille, Richard Mortensen and Gertrud Vasegaard. The following year, she was a student at the Art Academy in Copenhagen.

Sonja Ferlov began her artistic career as a painter and was an early part of the Danish avant-garde, who gathered in the Association line. During a stay at the sisters Lisbeth Munch-Petersen and Gertrud Vasegaard home on Bornholm in 1935 – along with Bille and Mortensen – she made his first sculptures of found branches, which she intuitively put together into three-dimensional shapes. Later that summer she made sculptures in clay. The same year she made her debut on the surrealist Exhibition in Odense. 

 

 Sonja Ferlov moved to Paris in 1936 and got a Studio in the same building as Alberto Giacometti, with whom she began a lifelong friendship. She was the liaison between the international art world and the was on the way to introduce a completely new vision of art in Denmark. In 1938, she met her husband, the South African painter Ernest Mancoba. 

 The post-war years were turbulent for Sonja Ferlov. She appeared in various contexts, also Cobra  but she did not participate in the Cobra's exhibitions. Disagreements and misunderstandings between her and artist mates got the family to settle in France, where they isolated themselves for a long time from the art world. There is no identifiable sculptures from this period. In the early 1960s — where she moved back to Paris – she resumed in earnest her artistic work, and created in the years leading up to her death in a large number of major works.

Sonja Ferlov had roots in surrealism. She worked intuitively with his sculptures: they were created directly, without sketches and in dialogue with the material. Her working process was slow, careful and extremely self-critical. She worked the sculptures again and again, as often to destroy the finished work, because it did not meet the strict requirements, she asked to himself. It is one of the reasons that are known only approximately 110 different sculptures from her hand.

Sonja Ferlov was especially influenced by African art. The she had already come to know as a child through the parents ' friend Carl Kjersmeier, who had the largest collection of African figurines and masks. It was Sonja Ferlov, who in the middle of the 1930s introduced his artist colleagues to African art. Alien cultures were seen as immediate and sand art. Mask motif appears in her sculptures from 1938.

Sonja Ferlov thought as her artist colleagues  that art could help to change the world by conveying values such as trust, equality, tolerance and humanity. She believed it was the artist's task to establish a link between the art world and the political and social world, in the same way as the shaman in so-called primitive religions creates a connection between the spirits and man

 

Original

Under et ophold hos søstrene Lisbeth Munch-Petersen og Gertrud Vasegaard på Bornholm i 1935 – sammen med Bille og Mortensen – lavede hun sine første skulpturer af fundne grene, som hun intuitivt satte sammen til tredimensionelle figurer.

Narratives from Lebanon

 

Fouad El Khoury, The Flag -“Beirut City Center” series 1982

edition 1/5, inkjet on fine art paper, 120 x 150 cm

Courtesy of the Christa von Siemens Foundation

 

The Association for the Promotion and Exhibition of the Arts in Lebanon presents the first comprehensive exhibition of contemporary Lebanese art in the UK from 3 to 6 November 2011 at the Royal College of Art in Kensington, London.

 

Structured along five compelling themes the exhibition is designed to help interpret the country's varied and complex modern history by Lebanese artists living in and outside Lebanon.  The exhibition will delve into Lebanon’s socio-political realities, the determinant parameters of which have helped shaped and influenced a unique trend in post war contemporary art.

Ayah Bdeir, Elusive Electricity 2011
neon, steel, motion sensor, cables, custom electronics
in collaboration with Hirumi Nanayakkara, 70 x 260 cm
Courtesy of the Artist
















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