Zat Al Thawb Al Ahmar (Woman with Red Dress)

In this unique composition, Kayyali presents the elegant woman with a red dress sitting with a meditative gaze and depicted in strong fluid lines and a simplistic colour palette. The present work is from the collection of the late Mr and Mrs Toufic Jaroudi, acquired from the artist while Toufic would regularly travel to Syria with an interior decorator looking for furniture and artwork for his Beirut home. Both would meet many artists such as Kayyali along the way. Noted as one of the most influential Syrian artists with a short-lived yet prolific career, the artist painted along with flowers, and the countryside, portraits that depict ordinary people usually conveyed with a strong social message. While mostly of marginalized people, such as street vendors and beggars, he also depicted portraits of sitters in high Syrian society, including socialites and those in arts and theatre, illustrated as immobilized in time, in his signature technique on Masonite chipboard with stolid gazes.

Elegant and composed in her stature, her deep red dress contrasted against his signature ocean green colour, using bold black lines. This work was painted in just a few years before Kayyali’s death and during an era in Syria intensified with humanitarian and political crises. Following the Arab defeat in the Six Day War with Israel in 1967, the artist was in a deep depression, suffering from psychological distress, painting very gruesome charcoal works, only to resume painting in the early 1970s. From this time, his works are characterized by a tinge of melancholy, with compositions mirroring the Russian social realist painting.

Studying painting in the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma under a scholarship by the Ministry of Education, he held many solo exhibitions in Rome, Milan, Damascus and Beirut, with awards such as the Golden Medal for Foreigners in Ravenna and representing Syria with the acclaimed artist Fateh Moudarres at the Venice Biennale.