Lot 117: SULEIMAN MANSOUR (PALESTINIAN, B. 1947) Old Friends signed in Arabic, signe

SULEIMAN MANSOUR (PALESTINIAN, B. 1947) Old Friends signed in Arabic, signed and dated ‘S. Mansour 2000’ (lower left) mud on panel 74 7/8 x 31 1/2 in. (190 x 80cm.) Executed in 2000

PROVENANCE: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner. Renowned Palestinian artist Suleiman Mansour has been a champion and pioneer of the Palestinian artistic movement that has continuously pushed against the challenges and burdens that the Palestinian community has faced. Born in Birzeit, Mansour studied fne arts at Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem. Since the seventies, he has also contributed to the development of an iconography of the Palestinian struggle through his works. Mansour has contributed extensively to the development of an infrastructure for the fne arts in the West Bank. He was the head of the League of Palestinian Artists from 1986 to 1990 whilst spearheading the New Visions collective following the First Intifada. In 1994, Mansour co-founded al-Wasiti Art Center in East Jerusalem and served as Director from 1995 to 1996 where due to enforced restrictions the centre was forced to close. In the late 1980s, after a long career as a fgurative oil painter, Mansour began to experiment with mud and straw as an artistic medium. His choice was initially motivated by a twofold ideology; the explicit desire to create national art from the very soil of his homeland, and the deliberate decision to foster a revolutionary approach to Aesthetics in art by boycotting art supplies imported from Isr 3/4 l. Interestingly, by intuitively choosing to use mud within his new scope of works, Mansour was efectively drawing on his childhood memories where he used to spend time with his maternal grandmother Salma as she mixed straw with mud to make beehives. Producing works in two dimensional and three dimensional bas relief sculpturing, his earlier examples were abstract compositions that functioned like arch 3/4 ological sites in which disparate emblems of Palestinian identity and heritage were half buried and half revealed. In the mid-1990s onwards, having worked to perfect his use of layering and moulding the mud, Mansour turned back to fgurative representations. Notable works from this series are I am Ismail, a relief of the biblical fgure as an ancient tombstone and Hagar, a moulded face of the biblical fgure, prevalent in many art historical references. The present work entitled Old Friends, is a strong example from this series which shows Mansour’s accomplished command of the medium. Depicting three fgures embracing embedded into a format that is reminiscent of Christian icons, their facial expressions are desolate and full of despair. The cracks and distortions of the mud after the drying process fll the composition with a cause to suggest the passage of time and the impermanence of materiality. Through the title, Mansour suggests that he has lost many friends along the way, creating a visualisation of the Palestinian struggle in all its hardships and aspirations. These cracks thus suggest an element of decay, yet simultaneously refer to the strength of the Palestinian national sentiment and identity – in that the land of Palestine and the people are one, the soul of their people will always be deeply embedded into the Palestinian soil. Despite the separation and expelling of the Palestinian people from their land, the continued resistance and belief in their homeland runs deep within their veins like cracks in the drying mud. Symbolising an emblem of a collective identity, Old Friends is at once both haunting and aspirational. Although stylistic vicissitudes characterise Mansour’s artistic development over the last three decades, his early fgurative oil paintings of Palestinian farmers and rural landscapes have much in common with his latest mud compositions. Mansour’s art-making is thematically, emotionally and technically related to the work of the fellah who with his very own hands, rakes the soil, builds the mud hut and digs his grave.