Chafic Abboud was born in Lebanon in 1926 to a wealthy middle-class Lebanese family and his youth was an idyll of summers in the mountains, and winters in Beirut; at the time the 'Riviera' of the Middle East. There is little that is dark or melancholic, politicized or inflammatory in his work. Chafic Abboud is a pure artist, taking a still life, a landscape or a memory of his childhood and depicting it in a style that owes much to Abstract Expressionism - his works are always balanced, with one color complementing or offsetting another.


Having moved to Paris after graduating from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in 1947, Abboud frequented Andre Lhote's workshop and was a pupil of th...