Lot 20: * Halim Jurdak (Lebanon, born 1927) Reclining Nude

Halim Jurdak (Lebanon, born 1927)
Reclining Nude oil on board, framedsigned "Halim Jurdak" in Arabic and English and dated "1957" (on the verso), executed in 195749 x 40cm (19 5/16 x 15 3/4in).

Provenance:Property from a private collection, Beirut "There is no more a palette from which the colors are carried to the pictorial surface, because the pictorial surface itself has become the palette. The visual concept, or reality, does not go from my head to the pictorial surface, but is generated through the meeting of the two midway." - Halim JurdakHalim Jurdak was born in 1927 in Ain El Sindianeh, North Lebanon and began his artistic training at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Art in 1953. He is the first Lebanese artist to work in the medium of etching and engraving on an equal footing with painting and drawing. His work has won many prizes, including the first prize for Engraving at the Annual Exhibition of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. He has participated in numerous international and regional exhibitions and began teaching at the Institute of Fine Arts of the Lebanese University in Beirut in 1966. Jurdak has written numerous artistic and literary articles and has published several books, including The Metamorphosis of Line and Color which deals with the psychic and mental motives underlying contemporary and modern plastic-artistic movements, and The Eye of Contentment which consists of contemplations and meditations on art.Jurdak's painting style has developed considerably throughout the years from academic realism to cubism, to figurative abstraction, to non-figurative abstraction, and then to free non-objective forms, patterns and compositions born from the qualities of pure abstract disengaged colors and lines. In his later work, the artist began to focus heavily on the female form by beautifully capturing its warmth, elasticity, harmonies, cadences and curvaceousness. The exhibition of the female body has been a normal feature of western societies for centuries. John Berger describes the nude as "the ever-recurring subject" in 19th century; identifying the same range of submissive positions and gestures in paintings. The reclining nude was a popular subject matter particularly in French painting often placed in an exotic setting with suggestions of sexual submissiveness and female objectification. Here Jurdak's reclining nude challenges and defies Middle Eastern patriarchal society and the veiled female form which has been seen to western society as the most tangible sign of a women's oppression and confinement. One of the few expectations to the idea of "no sexual power within the frame, only outside the frame" was Claude Manet's Olympia painting; its boldness caused widespread controversy in the 19th century and a turning point in Modern Art as it broke out of the stereotypical representation of women. It was the first time a female nude symbolized female sensuality, wealth, and modernity allowing the woman to celebrate and embrace her body and sexuality in a voluptuous way. '"To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude " (Berger, John 1972)