Written by FADIA ANTAR

Hussein Madi was born in Chebaa, a town on the southeastern tip of Lebanon, in 1938. He spent his summers following his paternal grandfather into the orchards, observing him perform with talent, diligence, and mastery of his daily farming, carpentry, or blacksmith chores. From his stoic and wise grandfather, Madi learned methodology in work and persevering in any mission until its complete achievement.^[1]

As early as in his elementary school years, Madi chose as a companion, the Larousse French dictionary, attracted by its one-line descriptive illustrations of birds, trees, and plants. The young boy would carry papers hidden between the Larousse pages and regularly try to draw the images of the book.^[2] It was at the age of 18, in 1958, that Madi enrolled at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA), against the will of his parents.^[3] To sustain himself and pay his tuition, he had to work as an illustrator and caricaturist at several newspapers such as Dar el Kifah and Jaridat al Yaoum.^[4]

Madi’s studies at ALBA were formative in the subject of human anatomy. The students worked with a live model called Mariam, and Madi was keen to observe, understand, and sketch every function of the human body and its relations with its environment.

When Mariam used to leave the atelier after her three-hours pose, Madi and his classmates would bring a porter from the street, and for a few piastres, they would dress him in a bathing suit and have him pose to be drawn.^[5]

In 1963, after a failed attempt at obtaining a scholarship to study in Rome, Madi spent nine months, illustrating books and working for a daily newspaper in Baghdad, Iraq. He earned enough money to plan a two-month trip to Rome, but his two-month plan became an extended residence of 22 years. The artist enrolled at the Academia di Belle Arti di Roma in December 1963, where after a two-month trial period, he was accepted into the school and was even allowed to skip the first year.^[6]

In 1965 the Lebanese Ministry of Education granted Madi a scholarship to further his studies in Rome. He won the sculpture award and was given 70.000 Lebanese Liras at that time. He also participated at the Salon D'Automne, organized by Sursock Museum, and was granted its first prize.^[7] During his stay in Rome, Madi regularly visited Beirut; a couple of months each summer, to organize exhibitions in local galleries. During the summers, from 1972 to 1987 Madi taught at the Lebanese University’s Institute of Fine Arts. These two yearly months spent in Lebanon allowed the artist to earn some money and establish connections with the Arab art world ^[8]. Madi’s final return to Beirut was in 1986; he was by then, a multi-talented artist mastering a wide range of mediums and techniques in painting, sculpture, mosaics, fresco, and graphic art.

From Madi's perspective, the best source of artistic knowledge begins with a deep understanding of the elements he encounters, whether it is nature, a human body, or an animal. His acute detailing treatment of his surroundings allows him to observe every element, understand its composition, how it functions, and reproduce it in reduced lines and forms. The real inspiration behind Madi’s art is the nature itself and the creatures of God; his abstraction is a personal interpretation of the living^[9]. In his particular way of scrutinizing the living object, Madi dissects its spiritual component and reduces its graphic representation to one unit. He depicts the birds, for example, in one singular design, in an attempt to capture the purest form of a bird, its meaning and essence. Madi creates a sort of a template that is endlessly repeated. Each of these units follows its particular set of rules: it varies in size, position, number, and color, but the core structure remains constant^[10]. By superposing an abstract form that refers to a bird, in different colors, positions, and numbers, the artist explores the interactions of colors with each other. He inspects the relationships of those forms within the space of the painting.

The artist's abstract shapes gather in lines, whether horizontal, vertical, diagonal, or even undulant ones; they invite viewers to read and decode their interrelations, movements, and relationships between colors to reach their core. They form an alphabet pure of any semantic reference, that is not an Arabic one, nor a pictorial hieroglyph, it resembles more to the cuneiform scripts, it’s a journey towards the origins of the writing^[11]. Shaped out of geometrical forms, lines, sharp angles, and curves, they hint towards the principles of Islamic art^[12]. Their endless repetition retraces a Sufi dynamic, a passage to reach the creator; within this multiplicity, Madi performs the unity.

The repetition and interaction between shapes energize Madi's compositions. He structures his work within order and discipline as if he was building on an invisible grid. His templates or elements organize themselves in lines and sequences even when swarming on each other. Those overlapping shapes attract each other and repel from each other, creating an impression of movement in the painting. In the absence of shading, the templates shade one another; give a hint of depth for each other without suggesting any illusion of perspective. In Madi's figurative works, whether nudes or still lives, the volumetric figure monopolizes all the space of the painting, leaving behind it a background with a reduced suggestion of perspective.

Originating from his one line drawing, Madi’s metal sculptures are necessarily a 3D, real-life materialization of his designed shapes. By transposing his sketch on a metal sheet, he cuts it from the sheet, then bends and folds to show form, and create angles.^[13] Madi transfers all his subject matters into sculptures; his women, horses, birds, bulls, apples, and flowers can be in a static posture, but mostly, they appear ready to take action.^[14] The way he bends and folds his metal revives the form out of the flatness of the sheet, through shade and light, and prompts the allusion to origami (the Japanese art of folding paper to create designs out of a flat sheet of paper).

In Madi’s chromatic explorations, away from lights and shades, as in his flat shapes, one can see the reference to Picasso’s art; at the same time, the reference to Matisse is made clear in his simplified figures.^[15] The diligence of Madi to read through the system of nature and analyze its rules capturing the essence of things is perceived as his anchor into Islamic art.^[16] Throughout a prosperous production, Hussein Madi succeeded in portraying a signature stamp. The artist passed away in January 2024.

Notes:

[1] Aida Cherfan, “About Madi, the Man and the Artist,” in Madi: A Boundless Life (Beirut: A. Antoine, 2012), pp. 14-15)

[2] Helen Khal, “The Inner Structure of Madi's Art,” in The Art of Madi (London: Saqi Books, 2005), p.8)

[3] Helen Khal, “The Inner Structure of Madi's Art,” in The Art of Madi (London: Saqi Books, 2005), p. 9)

[4] Aida Cherfan, “About Madi, the Man and the Artist,” in Madi: A Boundless Life (Beirut: A. Antoine, 2012), p. 21)

[5] Helen Khal, “The Inner Structure of Madi's Art,” in The Art of Madi (London: Saqi Books, 2005), p. 9)

[6] Aida Cherfan, “About Madi, the Man and the Artist,” in Madi: A Boundless Life (Beirut: A. Antoine, 2012), p. 24)

[7] Aida Cherfan, “About Madi, the Man and the Artist,” in Madi: A Boundless Life (Beirut: A. Antoine, 2012), p. 27)

[8] Aida Cherfan, “About Madi, the Man and the Artist,” in Madi: A Boundless Life (Beirut: A. Antoine, 2012), pp. 32-34)

[9] Aida Cherfan, “An Encounter with Madi,” in Madi: A Boundless Life (Beirut: A. Antoine, 2012), pp. 132-133)

[10] Helen Khal, “Hussein Madi”, in Resonances, 82 Lebanese Artists Reviewed by Helen Khal (Beirut: Fine Arts Publishing, 2011), p.199)

[11] Abbas Baydun, Hussein Madi: lāʻib Al-aškāl (Beirut: Antoine Library, 2012), pp.9-10)

[12] Helen Khal, “Hussein Madi”, in Resonances, 82 Lebanese Artists Reviewed by Helen Khal (Beirut: Fine Arts Publishing, 2011), p.201)

[13] Abbas Baydun, Hussein Madi: lāʻib Al-aškāl (Beirut: Antoine Library, 2012), pp.39-43)

[14] Abbas Baydun, Hussein Madi: lāʻib Al-aškāl (Beirut: Antoine Library, 2012), p.47)

[15] Randa Sadaka, “5 De Pic - Hussein Madi,” Tele Liban Official, April 29, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKNLe68P__0)

[16] Maha Azizeh Sultan, “حسين ماضي,” مجلة أجنحة الأرز - Art Focus, no. 172 (2019)

Sources

Khal, Helen, Joseph Tarrab, Michel Tapié, Martina Corgnati, Mounir Eido, and Samir Sayegh. The Art of Madi. London: Saqi Books, 2005.

Sultan, Maha Azizeh. “حسين ماضي.” مجلة أجنحة الأرز - Art Focus, no. 172 (2019).

Baydoun, Abbas. Hussein Madi: lāʻib Al-aškāl. Beirut: Antoine Library, 2012.

Baydoun, Abbas. Madi, Play & Recreation. Kuwait: Contemporary Art Platform, 2013.

Baydoun, Abbas, Aïda Cherfan, and Mounir Eido. Madi: A Boundless Life. Beirut: A. Antoine, 2012.

Tarrab, Joseph. Madi: Sculptures, 1969-2009: Bronze, Wax, Plaster, Terra Cotta, Wood, Cardboard, Galvanized Iron, Wrought Iron. Beirut: A. Antoine, 2009.

البيان. "الفنان حسين ماضي: الطبيعة معلمتي." البيان. October 10, 2016. Accessed January 30, 2018. http://www.albayan.ae/paths/books/2010-05-16-1.245154.

Madi Art - About US. Accessed January 30, 2018. http://www.madiart.me/AboutUs.html.

Khal, Helen, Cesar Namour, and Gabriel Schaub. Resonances, 82 Lebanese Artists Reviewed by Helen Khal. Beirut: Fine Arts Publishing, 2011.

Sadaka, Randa. “5 De Pic - Hussein Madi.” Tele Liban Official, April 29, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKNLe68P__0.