Lot 38
  • 38

Mohammed Al Saleem

Estimate
130,000 - 180,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Mohammed Al Saleem
  • Untitled
  • signed and dated 1989 twice 
  • oil on canvas 

Provenance

Hewar Art Gallery, Riyadh 
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1989 

Catalogue Note

Painted in 1989, Untitled is arguably one of the most visually striking of a group of paintings which feature this highly distinctive segmentation into organic block-like structures, marking the cornerstone of Al Saleem’s mature artistic development: form and landscape are essentially banished from these works, which in their layering, and shading suggest a search for subtle accords and variations on a theme similar to the one with which a composer achieves musical harmony.  Indeed while some of his abstract works are angular and jagged, the severity of these lines is softened by a muted colour palette. Reminiscent of distant desert dunes horizon, it is the fluidity of these linear, horizontal movements that seem to almost expose his composition wide open – a characteristic of many of his works.  Encrusted with richly textured and impastoed striations of glossy dark pigment, the surface of the composition is imbued with an astonishing sensation of energy and dynamism, whilst the paint layer appears almost three-dimensional in its extraordinary depth of surface. The desert played a pivotal role in his overarching interest in the ethereal and the contemplative to the extent that his thesis centred on Al Afakia-a, a ‘utopic imaging of the desert’, and became central to his aesthetic vision, drawing inspiration from full immersion in the beauty of the barren landscape. It is the purity of this experience that fuelled his subsequent distinctive contained block-like slabs of colour, emerging as if struggling against one another across the surface of the image.

Mohammed Al Saleem is one of Saudi Arabia’s preeminent modern artists and one who has greatly contributed to the growth and evolution of Saudi art. In fact, the artistic and critical influence that took place in the 80s saw the development of three key factions in the local art scene. The first was rooted in tradition and heritage; the second saw local customs as a hindrance to artistic progress, and the third whom Al Saleem belonged to, sought a happy medium between the modernist and the traditionalist.

One of the first artists to have left the Kingdom for a pursuit of a formal art education, it is in the Academia delle Belle Arte in Florence that Al Saleem came across the works of neo- impressionist Henri-Edmond Cross. He was particularly touched by Edmond-Cross’s later work, and its gradual use of broader, blocky brushstrokes leaving small areas of exposed bare canvas between the strokes.  A shift which resulted in surfaces resembling mosaics, and owning his oeuvre the position of precursor to Fauvism and Cubism. Upon his return to the Kingdom Mohammed Al Saleem decided to teach many of these Western principles and techniques learned in his arid hometown of Marat.

Untitled displays Al Saleem’s signature fusion of abstraction with figuration: the artist effectively reconciled two ostensibly opposing styles whilst hovering thrillingly on the edge of both. Al Saleem is the first Saudi artist to have advocated his belief that a painting should follow both stylistic schools equally, both abstract and figurative, one to extend the flat surface and the latter to create more lyrical depth to the composition. Throughout the 1980s, Al Saleem had been hailed as the leading abstract artist of his generation, with his sensuously thick, impasto compositions earning him recognition as one of the leading figures of the Pioneers of the Gulf, who, in the aftermath of the Gulf war, have found solace in the evocation of geometric form and pure colour on canvas. Untitled was created around the time of this significant aesthetic turning point, and thus stands as a powerful summation of the artist’s early style whilst simultaneously acknowledging the future direction of Al Saleem’s oeuvre.