Rafic Charaf (

Baalbek Baalbek (; ar, بَعْلَبَكّ, Baʿlabakk, Syriac-Aramaic: ܒܥܠܒܟ) is a city located east of the Litani River in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, about northeast of Beirut. It is the capital of Baalbek-Hermel Governorate. In Greek and Roman ...

Lebanon Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to the north and east and Israel to the south, while Cyprus li ...

, 1932 –

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

2003) was a Lebanese painter. He studied at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts ALBA and, in 1955, obtained a scholarship from the Spanish government and went at the

Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABASF; ), located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery. A public law corporation, it is integrated together with other Spanish royal acad ...

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

before returning to Lebanon.

Life and work

Grown up in a poor neighborhood, Charaf pioneered an expressionistic style of painting, covering a range of themes including contemporary political issues, social struggles of his native Baalbek and folk art and poetry. Charaf appeared as a visionary and pessimistic artist when, in the early 1960s, he depicted lugubrious landscapes, often outfitted by wires and dead trees. He always showed social and political involvement in his art, so that when the

Lebanese Civil War The Lebanese Civil War ( ar, الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية, translit=Al-Ḥarb al-Ahliyyah al-Libnāniyyah) was a multifaceted armed conflict that took place from 1975 to 1990. It resulted in an estimated 120,000 fatalities a ...

broke up, he produced posters devoted to the National Resistance. Charaf eventually made during this period more personal drawings in which he interpreted his feelings about the tragedy that shook his country. Two of these drawings were part of The Road to Peace, an exhibition

Saleh Barakat Saleh Barakat (born in 1969 in Beirut, Lebanon) is a Lebanese art expert, gallery owner and curator. He studied at the American University of Beirut and was nominated as a Yale World Fellow in 2006. He runs Agial Art Gallery and Saleh Barakat Gall ...

curated in 2009 at the

Beirut Art Center Beirut Art Center is a space for exhibiting contemporary art in Beirut, Lebanon History Beirut Art Center opened to public in January 2009. It is managed as a non-profit organization whose founders and executive board members were Sandra Daghe ...

, encompassing Lebanese visual arts between 1975 and 1991. In the years following the beginning of the war, Charaf will drift into an opposite direction, working with gold leaf on icons inspired by Byzantine and Oriental religious mosaics and paintings. Rafic Charaf always showed interest on popular culture from his native region and elsewhere in the region. Inspired by oral history and folklore, he created a series of paintings depicting the epics of the Arab poet and hero

Antar Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) is an independent, national non-government, not-for-profit, community-based organisation founded in 1997 which advocates for the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Au ...

and his cousin, Abla, with whom he fell in love and married her.

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

* Body and Space, Planula Elissar, Beirut, 1981 * Antar wa Abla, Galerie Damo, Antelias, Lebanon, 1978 * Charaf, Contact Gallery, Beirut, 1975 * Charaf, Contact Gallery, Beirut, 1974 * Of Men and Horses, Contact Gallery, Beirut, 1973 * Forgotten Land, Carlton Hotel, Beirut, 1964 * Unesco Palace, 1961

Group exhibitions

, Archives of an Eternity,

Sursock Museum The Sursock Museum ( ar, قصر سرسق), which is officially known as the Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock Museum, is a modern art and contemporary art museum in Beirut, Lebanon. History In 1912, the wealthy and prominent Lebanese aristocrat Nicolas I ...

, 2019 * Art from Lebanon, Beirut Exhibition Center, 2012 * De Lumière et de Sang, Foundation Audi, Beirut, 2010 * The Road to Peace,

, 2009 * Landscapes.Cityscapes.1 – Maqam Art Gallery, Beirut, 2009 * Biennale de Paris, 1965 * 3rd Unesco Salon, Beirut, 1955

Awards

* Prix de l’Ile de France, 1963 * Ministry of Education of Lebanon, 1st Prize, 1959

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Charaf, Rafic 1932 births 2003 deaths 20th-century Lebanese painters