Shafic Abboud

Shafic Abboud was born in 1926 in the town of Bikfaya in Mount Lebanon. He studied at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts under Lebanese painter César Gemayel and Ferdinando Manetti from 1945 to 1947 before enrolling at the Faculté des Lettres in Paris in 1947. While in Paris he trained in the studios of André Lhote, Jean Metzinger, Othon Friesz and Fernand Léger and then studied drawing and engraving at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris with the support of a scholarship from the Lebanese government from 1952 to 1956. He remained in France for the rest of his life but frequently returned to Beirut where he exhibited widely. Notable exhibitions include the first Biennale de Paris (1959), Salon d’Automne, Beirut (1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966), and Centre d’Art (1971, 1972, 1975). He was awarded the Prix Victor Choquet in 1961 and Sursock Museum’s Prix du Salon d’Automne in 1964. He taught at the institute of Fine Arts at the Lebanese University from 1968-1975 and later at the Unité Pédagogique d’Architecture in Paris from 1978 to 1982. Abboud died in Paris in 2004. In 2011 the Institut du Monde Arabe hosted a major retrospective of his work, which travelled to the Beirut Exhibition Center the following year. A biography of the artist by Pascal le Thorel was published in 2015. His work is collected by public and private institutions in Paris, Beirut and the UAE.