01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Farid Aouad's Homo Flux with Footnotes, #53

Farid Aouad (Lebanese, 1924-1982) 

Homo Flux, c. early 1970
Oil on canvas 
16 3/8 x 51in. (194 x 129.5cm.)

Private collection

The painting depicts a group of an undefined number of men and women standing at a bar. Expressing an overriding sense of solitude, this scene of lonely strangers at the bar is the artist's way to convey his own feeling of loneliness. Tormented by his memories of Beirut, his inability to be integrated into Parisian society and his extreme poverty, Aouad was in some ways a hermit, having never married and spent time locked up in his studio far away from socialising. The painting of these crowds is two-fold; firstly to express his own solitude while attempting to be social and secondly to stay warm from the harsh French winters as these cafés and bars would offer him refuge from his own poverty. More on this painting

Born in South Lebanon in 1924, Farid Aouad lived in Paris most of his life. Aouad is best known for paintings that express solitude. He used scenes of lonely strangers in bars and cafés. Moreover, his attachment to the familiarity between the streets of old Beirut and Paris are a recurring emotional fixture in his work.

In all the scenes he painted, his acute observation and ability to capture the life of the moment, mixed with his free yet mature graphic style of painting, were the key elements of his success. Aouad became a rare witness of artistic boldness in his generation and showed his art at numerous exhibitions in Lebanon, France, Germany and Italy. Unfortunately, his work was never fully appreciated during his lifetime and he lived out his last years in ill health and poverty.

In a 1977 letter, Aouad wrote: “I produced very little this year: always the same challenge with painting, looking for something that is still missing.”

In 1979, he wrote: “It is cold, windy, and rainy. It is not easy to work. The tourists are hiding the fishermen and their cases, but I always try to find more evident perspectives.” More on Farid Aouad

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