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Lot Essay
Nuit et Jour, La Fuite (Night and Day, The Flight) depicts the biblical story of The Flight into Egypt, in which Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus flee Herod’s persecution in search of safety and of the new King of Kings. Guiragossian returned repeatedly to this subject throughout the decade between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, producing a number of oils and watercolours titled La Fuite. In this work, the mother looks down towards the child held close to her body, wrapped in long-draped fabric, while several other figures and a donkey surround them. The predominantly monochromatic palette, infused with yellow and green undertones, lends the scene a solemn yet luminous quality. Drawing on elements of Christian iconography, Guiragossian transforms the biblical narrative into an image of protection, displacement and collective vulnerability. It is a subject that would have held particular resonance for an artist whose own life was shaped by displacement and whose work repeatedly returned to the human consequences of conflict.
The biblical image of the mother and child also connects to one of the most enduring motifs in Guiragossian’s oeuvre. Growing up with an often-absent father, Guiragossian was raised primarily by his mother, who carried the responsibility of providing for the family. Like many refugee families at the time, they faced circumstances that led to him being placed in local Christian orphanages. His childhood in Jerusalem, spent partly in Salesian churches, brought him into close contact with Christian imagery and iconography. These early experiences became part of the visual and emotional vocabulary of his later work, in which the female figure frequently embodies protection, endurance and the longing for maternal care. Guiragossian described the mother as “Love, Childhood, Suffering and Peace. She’s the one who is against sending her son and husband to wars,” (S. Bardaouil, T. Fellrath, M. Guiragossian (eds.), Paul Guiragossian: Displacing Modernity, El Metn and Munich 2018). In Nuit et Jour, La Fuite, this understanding of motherhood resonates with the biblical story, where Mary’s care for her child is inseparable from the experience of flight and the search for refuge. The child, rendered in lighter shades, carries an opposing symbolism of innocence and vulnerability.
The brightness that defines the work is characteristic of Guiragossian’s early 1970s paintings, when he sought to convey a message of hope amidst the devastating Lebanese Civil War. Although the biblical narrative belongs to a much earlier time, its themes of exile, persecution and the search for safety would have carried immediate significance in the context in which Guiragossian was painting. While many artists, particularly Palestinians, left Lebanon, Guiragossian remained and continued to paint. The slender figures in Nuit et Jour, La Fuite stand closely gathered, their physical proximity creating a sense of solidarity and protection in contrast to the divisions and violence surrounding them. The luminous yellows and greens contain a more complex emotional register, their intensity carrying both hope and an undercurrent of unease. The extended brushstrokes and imposing scale draw the viewer into this tightly gathered group, creating an intimate sense of shared presence.
The chromatic intensity of Nuit et Jour, La Fuite is inseparable from the physicality of Guiragossian’s paint. Long, sweeping brushstrokes construct the elongated forms, while thicker passages of impasto give the surface a sculptural presence, allowing the figures to emerge with palpable volume. The yellow and green palette is richly modulated, with subtle shifts in tone and density animating the surface, while lighter passages around the mother and child create an almost luminous effect. Colour therefore becomes both structural and emotional: it defines the figures, directs the eye and imbues the composition with an inner radiance that coexists with the darker undertones of the subject. As in much of Guiragossian’s mature painting, the surface oscillates between figuration and abstraction. The human form remains recognisable even as it dissolves into a rhythm of colour, gesture and texture, transforming an ancient story of flight into a deeply human meditation on protection, displacement and hope.
Born in Jerusalem in 1926 to Armenian parents who had survived the Armenian Genocide, Guiragossian experienced displacement from an early age. His family later moved to Jaffa, where he attended Studio Yarkon, before settling in Lebanon in the late 1940s. In Beirut, he worked as an art teacher and illustrator while continuing to develop his own practice, eventually exhibiting widely and gaining recognition within the Lebanese art scene. His scholarship to Florence in 1956 marked a decisive step in his development, leading to his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze in 1957–1958. In 1962, he received a French government scholarship to study and paint in Paris at the Ateliers des Maîtres de l’École de Paris. By the mid-1960s, Guiragossian had established himself as one of the most important artists in Lebanon and the wider Arab world.
His work is now represented in major international collections, including the British Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Institut du monde arabe, Paris; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Sursock Museum, Beirut; Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation (DAF), Beirut and Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.
As 2026 marks the centenary year of Paul Guiragossian’s birth, and with the artist being celebrated in a major centenary exhibition at the Bassam Freiha Art Foundation in Abu Dhabi, developed in collaboration with the Paul Guiragossian Foundation, Nuit et Jour, La Fuite (Night and Day, The Escape) offers a compelling reflection on the early 1970s, a pivotal chapter in his practice. Through the rhythmic elongation of the figures, luminous chromatic structure and tactile force of the painted surface, Guiragossian transforms the biblical story of flight into a meditation on displacement, protection and hope, its ancient narrative acquiring renewed resonance in an era marked by conflict and exile.
The biblical image of the mother and child also connects to one of the most enduring motifs in Guiragossian’s oeuvre. Growing up with an often-absent father, Guiragossian was raised primarily by his mother, who carried the responsibility of providing for the family. Like many refugee families at the time, they faced circumstances that led to him being placed in local Christian orphanages. His childhood in Jerusalem, spent partly in Salesian churches, brought him into close contact with Christian imagery and iconography. These early experiences became part of the visual and emotional vocabulary of his later work, in which the female figure frequently embodies protection, endurance and the longing for maternal care. Guiragossian described the mother as “Love, Childhood, Suffering and Peace. She’s the one who is against sending her son and husband to wars,” (S. Bardaouil, T. Fellrath, M. Guiragossian (eds.), Paul Guiragossian: Displacing Modernity, El Metn and Munich 2018). In Nuit et Jour, La Fuite, this understanding of motherhood resonates with the biblical story, where Mary’s care for her child is inseparable from the experience of flight and the search for refuge. The child, rendered in lighter shades, carries an opposing symbolism of innocence and vulnerability.
The brightness that defines the work is characteristic of Guiragossian’s early 1970s paintings, when he sought to convey a message of hope amidst the devastating Lebanese Civil War. Although the biblical narrative belongs to a much earlier time, its themes of exile, persecution and the search for safety would have carried immediate significance in the context in which Guiragossian was painting. While many artists, particularly Palestinians, left Lebanon, Guiragossian remained and continued to paint. The slender figures in Nuit et Jour, La Fuite stand closely gathered, their physical proximity creating a sense of solidarity and protection in contrast to the divisions and violence surrounding them. The luminous yellows and greens contain a more complex emotional register, their intensity carrying both hope and an undercurrent of unease. The extended brushstrokes and imposing scale draw the viewer into this tightly gathered group, creating an intimate sense of shared presence.
The chromatic intensity of Nuit et Jour, La Fuite is inseparable from the physicality of Guiragossian’s paint. Long, sweeping brushstrokes construct the elongated forms, while thicker passages of impasto give the surface a sculptural presence, allowing the figures to emerge with palpable volume. The yellow and green palette is richly modulated, with subtle shifts in tone and density animating the surface, while lighter passages around the mother and child create an almost luminous effect. Colour therefore becomes both structural and emotional: it defines the figures, directs the eye and imbues the composition with an inner radiance that coexists with the darker undertones of the subject. As in much of Guiragossian’s mature painting, the surface oscillates between figuration and abstraction. The human form remains recognisable even as it dissolves into a rhythm of colour, gesture and texture, transforming an ancient story of flight into a deeply human meditation on protection, displacement and hope.
Born in Jerusalem in 1926 to Armenian parents who had survived the Armenian Genocide, Guiragossian experienced displacement from an early age. His family later moved to Jaffa, where he attended Studio Yarkon, before settling in Lebanon in the late 1940s. In Beirut, he worked as an art teacher and illustrator while continuing to develop his own practice, eventually exhibiting widely and gaining recognition within the Lebanese art scene. His scholarship to Florence in 1956 marked a decisive step in his development, leading to his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze in 1957–1958. In 1962, he received a French government scholarship to study and paint in Paris at the Ateliers des Maîtres de l’École de Paris. By the mid-1960s, Guiragossian had established himself as one of the most important artists in Lebanon and the wider Arab world.
His work is now represented in major international collections, including the British Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Institut du monde arabe, Paris; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Sursock Museum, Beirut; Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation (DAF), Beirut and Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.
As 2026 marks the centenary year of Paul Guiragossian’s birth, and with the artist being celebrated in a major centenary exhibition at the Bassam Freiha Art Foundation in Abu Dhabi, developed in collaboration with the Paul Guiragossian Foundation, Nuit et Jour, La Fuite (Night and Day, The Escape) offers a compelling reflection on the early 1970s, a pivotal chapter in his practice. Through the rhythmic elongation of the figures, luminous chromatic structure and tactile force of the painted surface, Guiragossian transforms the biblical story of flight into a meditation on displacement, protection and hope, its ancient narrative acquiring renewed resonance in an era marked by conflict and exile.