Tabari Artspace Gallery exhibited a collection of works by Lebanese master Hussein Madi in Dubai.
Madi’s joyful experiments in colour and form have resulted in a unique body of work that relates to modern artists like Matisse and Picasso as well as to the principles of divine harmony that inform the abstract designs of Islamic art. Madi's work focuses on both figures and more abstract decorative works. Madi is known particularly for his delightful paintings of women, which are supposed to represent the daily life of ordinary women in Lebanese culture and society. These are of women both in the home and at leisure, whether relaxing on the beach, in their home clothes, or talking with their friends. His more abstract works are an extension of this as he paints leaves and natural vegetation as symbolism of life, beauty and happiness.
Whether in two or three dimensions, Madi’s lines sing with a spontaneous freedom that belies the careful, even exacting, calculations that the artist invests in each work. The combination of meticulousness and sensuality is everywhere evident in Madi’s work, inspired by his profound belief in “God’s universal order, in which everything is different and yet composed of the same cosmic elements.”
Born in 1938 in Chebaa, Lebanon, he lived between Rome and Beirut from 1973-1986. In 1986 he decided to stay permanently in Beirut. His art has been viewed by thousands of people around the world at such venues as the British Museum, the Venice Biennale and Tokyo’s Ueno Museum.