Written by WAFA ROZ

Pioneering Lebanese painter, sculptor, and printmaker, Mohammad El Rawas was born in Beirut in 1951. He earned his degree in painting from the Institute of Fine Art at the Lebanese University in 1975. Escaping the Lebanese civil war, he fled with his family to Damascus, and later to Morocco in 1976, where he worked as an art instructor at the École Normale Supérieure de l’Enseignement Technique de Rabat before moving back to Beirut in 1979. Granted a scholarship from the Lebanese University, he pursued his MFA in printmaking at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, and graduated in 1981, after which he returned to Lebanon. He taught at the Institute of Fine Arts of the Lebanese University in Beirut from 1982 to 2009, during which time he also taught in the Department of Architecture and Design of the American University of Beirut (1992-2004). El Rawas served as the Secretary-General of the Association of Lebanese Artists from 1982 to 1992 and is a founding member of the Syndicate of Lebanese Artists.           

El Rawas’s artistic talents emerged from the unusual circumstances of his childhood.

As a small boy, he was prohibited from playing with the neighborhood children or from going out with friends. As an alternative, his overprotective father offered him tools to paint and draw. El Rawas became fond of the activity and kept his artwork in a little box, which he would open every other day to “allow his drawings to breathe.” 

El Rawas started with a conventional approach to painting, taught by several renowned Lebanese modernists such as Munir Eido, Chafic Abboud, Aref El Rayess, Yvette Ashkar, and Halim Jurdak. He painted still life, nudes, and city life, favoring techniques gleaned from studying impressionism, cubism, and abstract expressionism. Devastated by the war, he stopped painting for nearly two years but resumed his artistic endeavors once he settled in Morocco in 1976. Here, he started questioning the definition of a work of art and the role of an artist, beginning to experiment and striving to create intellectually stimulating works. During this time, he abandoned the visible, gestural brushstroke in favor of an airbrush technique that did not convey the hand of the artist in the same emotional way. His work during this period took a turn for the political and incorporated illustrations, graphics, and texts as both expressive and compositional elements. Building on the work of Neo-Dada and Pop artists, El Rawas introduced collage into his work, appropriating and re-contextualizing existing photographs only to undermine their original meaning. In addition to collaging, El Rawas incorporated readymade images into his work using a solvent transfer technique, by which a chemical, such as acetone or paint thinner, soaks through the original image and reprints it onto the surface below.

It was not until he moved to London in 1981 that the artist was introduced to more advanced printing technologies. Under the tutelage of Bartolomeo Dos Santos, El Rawas studied printmaking techniques such as etching, lithography, and silk screening. Though he proved adept at these methods and took to them eagerly, he was unable to continue his lithography or silkscreen practices upon his return to Beirut because there were no suitably equipped workshops in the city at the time. As a result, he resumed oil and acrylic painting, producing photorealistic portraits juxtaposed with abstract forms in grid compositions.

When he started teaching at the Lebanese University, he developed an etching studio and started producing his works there, accomplishing his first fine art print in Lebanon, A Childhood Moment, in 1982. He established another etching, engraving and silkscreen studio at the American University of Beirut in 1990 in the Department of Architecture and Design.

El Rawas’s eclectic style seems to draw self-consciously from many twentieth-century art movements, evoking elements of works by Dadaist Hannah Höch, assemblage artist Joseph Cornell, abstract expressionist Robert Rauschenberg, and pop artist Peter Blake. Indeed, El Rawas often makes explicit reference to art history through his work: as seen in The Lady Who Descended the Staircase (1987), an assemblage that references Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 Nude Descending a Staircase. It also reveals in the artist revisiting Las Meninas (2009), which incorporates imagery from the famous 1656 Velasquez painting, and Circe’s Assistant (2014), which appropriates the central figure in John William Waterhouse’s Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (1891). Each of El Rawas’s compositions is a layered assemblage of genres, styles, media, and references, borrowing from sources as diverse as Italian Renaissance painting, architectural magazines, and comics. The artist’s three-dimensional works equally arise from an amalgam of sources and materials, making use of metal, encaustic, balsa wood, and plastic; in 2013, he created a series of small sculptures that incorporated plastic figurines of Japanese comic book characters known as “Manga girls.” Juxtaposing “high” and “low” culture in ways that clash uncomfortably, El Rawas creates an imaginary world that mirrors the absurdity of our own. 

The artist currently lives and works in Lebanon.    

Sources

Abillama, Nour Salamé, Marie Tomb, Gregory Buchakjian, Sylvia Agémian, Tamara Zantout, and Pia Bou Khater. Art from Lebanon: modern and contemporary artists 1880-1975. Beirut, Lebanon: Wonderfuleditions, 2012.

Rawas, Mohammad, Nāzik Sābā. Yārid, and Heather Reyes. The art of Rawas:. London: Saqi, 2004.

Rawas, Mohammad, and Antoine Boulad. Mohammasd El Rawas, oeuvres récentes 2005-2007. Beyrouth: Aida Cherfan Fine Art, 2007.

"Profiles and Features." Maymanah Farhat. September 06, 2017. Accessed January 02, 2018. https://maymanahfarhat.com/essays-on-artists/.

Ammoun, Camille. "Stroobia." Mohammad El Rawas: A Comfortable Discomfort. Accessed January 02, 2018. http://www.stroobia.com/2016/06/mohammad-el-rawas-comfortable-discomfort.html.

Matar, William. One Fine Art | Artists - Modern Graphic Artists / Mohommad Rawas. Accessed January 02, 2018. https://www.onefineart.com/art...

"Exhibitions – El Rawas." El Rawas. Accessed January 02, 2018. http://www.elrawas.net/exhibit... 

Mohammad Rawas, Sculptures
artmodernemv
Published on Jan 12, 2015
YouTube. January 12, 2015. Accessed January 02, 2018.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruvhYwNsNpQ.

Words on Works: Mohammad El Rawas
Saradar Collection
Published on Sep 13, 2017
YouTube. September 13, 2017. Accessed January 02, 2018.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcHYy2CREOo&t=566s.

COMMENTARIES by MOHAMMAD EL RAWAS "Art Sawa"
Published on Sep 23, 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXR8suqOBR4&t=44s