Nabil Nahas

By (author) Nabil Nahas; Text by Ratcliff Carter
Short description/annotation
This important monograph highlights more than four decades'' worth of paintings by the internationally acclaimed Lebanese/American artist Nabil Nahas.
Description
Nabil Nahas is a master of color, texture, and atmosphere. Lebanon''s most famous contemporary artist, he is known for his geometric motifs and decorative patterns inspired by the natural world. This lavishly illustrated survey, the definitive monograph on the artist''s oeuvre to date, celebrates his unique vision. Schooled in the tradition of Western abstract painting, Nahas has interpreted its influences and styles in a provocative way, encapsulating the dichotomies of old and new, abstraction and realism, and East and West. Among Nahas''s best-known series are his thickly encrusted starfish paintings and his monumental landscapes of the cacti, cedar, olive, and palm trees relating to his childhood in evocative palettes of gold, ocher, and black against a dazzling Mediterranean blue sky. An insightful essay by Carter Ratcliff explores Nahas''s artistic development through an art-historical lens, contextualizing it within modern and postmodern art.
Review quote
"Artist Nabil Nahas brought his early fascination with the work of the Abstract Expressionists to his own vigorous canvases, which he has infused with iconography from nature. Nabil Nahas features sumptuous reproductions of his paintings, including his mesmerizing starfish accumulations (many embedded with actual specimens); his moody portraits of lebanese cedars; and exuberant, brilliantly colored constellations of fractals, looping lines, and sea-life shapes."  
-ELLE DECOR
Biographical note
Nabil Nahas emigrated to the United States in the 1970s and received his MFA from Yale University. His paintings are in major museum collections, including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the British Museum and the Tate Modern in London. Carter Ratcliff is an American art critic, writer, and poet. He has contributed to many publications, including Art in America and Parkett. He is also the author of several artist monographs including Robert Longo, Andy Warhol Portraits, and Alex Katz.