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Lot Essay
Soukhour Meyrouba is an exquisite work from Aref El Rayess’ oeuvre, centred around the rocky terrain of a village in Northern Lebanon. Soukhour, which translates to “rocks” in Arabic, are placed at the forefront of the composition, asserting their strong dominance within the landscape and highlighting their conceptual significance for the artist. The other elements of the scenery, including the trees and hills, are rendered with less thoroughness, serving merely as a backdrop to the rocks. Their perspective and scale are even intentionally distorted, further emphasising the monumentality of the rocks and their importance in the composition.
El Rayess’ whimsical and mystical style of depicting permeates the scene. In addition to the distortion of scale, the breeze felt in this place is rendered as visible lines, allowing the viewer to see the sensation of being in that place. The hills are painted in a red umber tone, standing in beautiful contrast to the cooler tones of the rocks. As for the rocks themselves, the central focus of the composition, El Rayess renders them as abstract human silhouettes. Frozen in geological time, the slopes of natural stone are carved to suggest human presence: strong, powerful, and resilient.
At the time this work was created, Aref El Rayess was also working as a sculptor, producing monumental stone pieces for public spaces in both Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. This context helps explain his sculptural treatment of the rocks in the painting. When viewed alongside his Untitled 1977 work in the Barjeel Collection, a clear progression emerges: the rock-figures that once occupied only the foreground now dominate the entire composition, dispensing with the landscape altogether. These forms shift from geological masses into more abstract, figurative shapes, recalling the configuration of human figures in The Witnesses, his graphite drawing from his 1976 book The Road to Peace. Seen through this lens, Soukhour Meyrouba offers a compelling window into El Rayess’ imaginative process and serves as a bridge between his sculptural practice and his politically engaged works of the 1970s.
Aref El Rayess was one of Lebanon’s most influential artists and is widely regarded as a pioneer of Lebanese modernism. His work has been celebrated in major retrospectives, including at the Sharjah Art Museum (2022) and Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (2023). Works from his Desert series were also recently exhibited at the 60th Venice Biennale, and his art is held in esteemed public and private collections, such as the Sursock Museum, Beirut; the Musée Public National des Beaux-Arts, Algiers; the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, and the Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut.
El Rayess’ whimsical and mystical style of depicting permeates the scene. In addition to the distortion of scale, the breeze felt in this place is rendered as visible lines, allowing the viewer to see the sensation of being in that place. The hills are painted in a red umber tone, standing in beautiful contrast to the cooler tones of the rocks. As for the rocks themselves, the central focus of the composition, El Rayess renders them as abstract human silhouettes. Frozen in geological time, the slopes of natural stone are carved to suggest human presence: strong, powerful, and resilient.
At the time this work was created, Aref El Rayess was also working as a sculptor, producing monumental stone pieces for public spaces in both Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. This context helps explain his sculptural treatment of the rocks in the painting. When viewed alongside his Untitled 1977 work in the Barjeel Collection, a clear progression emerges: the rock-figures that once occupied only the foreground now dominate the entire composition, dispensing with the landscape altogether. These forms shift from geological masses into more abstract, figurative shapes, recalling the configuration of human figures in The Witnesses, his graphite drawing from his 1976 book The Road to Peace. Seen through this lens, Soukhour Meyrouba offers a compelling window into El Rayess’ imaginative process and serves as a bridge between his sculptural practice and his politically engaged works of the 1970s.
Aref El Rayess was one of Lebanon’s most influential artists and is widely regarded as a pioneer of Lebanese modernism. His work has been celebrated in major retrospectives, including at the Sharjah Art Museum (2022) and Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (2023). Works from his Desert series were also recently exhibited at the 60th Venice Biennale, and his art is held in esteemed public and private collections, such as the Sursock Museum, Beirut; the Musée Public National des Beaux-Arts, Algiers; the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, and the Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut.