- 31
Hatem El-Mekki
Description
- Hatem el-Mekki
- Les Réfugiés (The Refugees)
- signed
- oil on canvas, in two parts
- Executed circa 1958.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Condition
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."
Catalogue Note
After returning to Tunis at the beginning of the Second World War, he held his first solo exhibition which was met with great success. Characteristic of his technique was a crossover between impressionist landscapes and depictions of poverty, a consequence of his formal training and the psychological impact of the war period. These influences in turn set his work apart from traditional impressionism, and have led his style to be categorized as bold and aggressive. The artist settled definitively in Tunisia in 1951 where he started a series of large-scale paintings in Khaznadar College. El Mekki is also well-known for a series of postal stamps he was commissioned to produce for the United Nations and a few other countries.
Inspired by the end of colonial empires and the recent events of the Tunisian and Algerian war, el Mekki’s style became politically impregnated. He welcomed international exposure by taking part in worldwide exhibitions in Cairo, across the United States, Germany and Korea where he was honored for his work. Considered as an engaged artist, he refused to be involved in any one ideological movement, and resisted falling prey to radical thinking. He often said that he did not go to war to pretend otherwise with a pencil and a brush. His pieces may appear as a sudden outburst of irrepressible anger and rebellion, however, he never pretended to exorcise our fears and demons. Like his contemporaries, he simply related events that touched him with his own personal stroke, questioning the real physical harm that comes from war and exile.
In a single scene The Refugees depicts the internal state of the artist; conditioned by decades of war and internecine strife. Through this work, El Mekki historicized loaded notions of identity and its ties to an ill-defined conception of homeland. The mood is forlorn and insecure, represented in the characteristic el Mekki style with grey daubs scattered across a rust-coloured pallet. Deeply disturbed by the reports of death in media and his own eye-witness accounts, the artist sought to represent homlessness and exile with a poignant intensity. Can men be refugees within their own land? Can men be refugees of their family and heritage as well, even refugees of their past political certitudes? Within The Refugees, El Mekki meets these questions with an internal driving rage, refusing collective conciousness the right to forget the nightmares that haunt it.