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THEY DESTROY OUR ART, OUR BEAUTY, OUR CULTURE, OUR DEVELOPMENT
Samia Al-Halabi
Naim I. Farhat
Artist Yousef Ghazzawi lives in Beirut and had his
studio destroyed by the Israelis for the third time
this past month (July 2006). The first time was in 1977 in his
home town of Khiyam when his home was bombed. The
second time was in 1983 during the Israeli occupation
of Beirut when the apartment building he was living in
collapsed due to bombing. Each time his entire studio
and its content were destroyed. Now, this third time,
he has lost his entire life’s output. Lost in the
bombing were hundreds of paintings, mosaic panels,
work on glass, work on paper, sketchbooks, notebooks,
precious mementoes, and a vast library of art books in
three languages. He had salvaged a few things from
the previous two demolitions and was saving them. In
an interview by phone, August 16, 2006, he said “I was
planning a retrospective exhibition of my work from
the past 25 years, and all this work is now gone.”
Asked if he salvaged anything this time, Ghazzawi
said, “only some books, and the paintings which I
pulled out are torn to ribbons, I suppose there might
be a chance to restore a couple of them.”
" I see this war as one against our art and culture, against our
progress and development, a war against humanity. We want to
create beauty and they find an excuse to demolish us.”
Ghazzawi, a professor at the Lebanese University, is
an artist of breadth and vast experience. His wife,
Suzanne Chakaroun who is also a teacher of art, shared
his studio and also lost all of her work.
Ghazzaqi
spent many years in Paris studying and later
practicing his art. Much of his work bears the stamp
of his international experience. |
