Rêves du Poète (Ahlam Abu'l Alaa)

Born in Jerusalem in 1926 to survivors of the Armenian Genocide, Paul Guiragossian was passionate about painting from a very young age seeing as it was his refuge from the cruelty of the world around him. Growing up, Guiragossian was sent to boarding school, away from his mother who worked to provide an education for her sons. That separation from an early age led to his ongoing exploration around the theme of motherhood. He depicted his personal struggles of being estranged from her and longing for that embracing maternal love. His faceless figures delineated by thick brushstrokes using vibrant colours, evoke the human condition. Being depicted statically or in motion, his compositions seek a balance between an Expressionist’s touch and emotions through a vivid rhythm of tender, rounded lines. His configurations induce a serene aura through an expansive range of authentic human reality.

In the early 1940s, he and his family migrated to Jaffa where he enrolled in Studio Yarkon to develop his knowledge on painting. In 1947, they resettled in Lebanon, where Guiragossian started to produce portraits of the inhabitants from his neighborhood, defined by their flowing and lively strokes that capture the carnal and emotive state of his subjects.

However, the true turning point in his career was in 1956 when he was awarded the first prize in a painting competition: a scholarship to study painting at the Academia di Belle Arti di Firenze. He was later granted another scholarship by the government of France to study abroad at Les Ateliers des Maîtres de l'École de Paris. In the 1960s and 1970s, Guiragossian’s work exponentially focused on the troubles caused by the Armenian Genocide and his family’s forced relocation to Beirut, creating a painterly language for his audiences to better understand this personal journey.