Sortie de Métro

Much like Homo Flux and Silhouettes en Lumire (lots 9 and 11 respectively), the present work by Farid Aouad, Sortie de Métro from the early 1970s demonstrates how one's surroundings can be paradoxically familiar and strange at the same time, full of peculiar mysteries. Applying a palette of bright colours that showed a development from his preference of using black and white, Aouad tries to depict the magical and mythical underground world that he discovered in the Métro, a world hidden by external facades. A metaphor in some ways for the approach Aouad took in living his life as a lonely man tormented by his memories of Lebanon and inability to integrate into French society, the Métro became a refuge for the artist not only as a way to socialise indirectly with the people he drew and captured in his drawings and paintings, but also being very poor, it was a refuge for the artist to keep warm. Falling deeper and deeper into depression as time passed, Aouad's painting became more sombre and muted in palette over time, until his tragic death in 1982 from an unknown illness.