NOW AND TEN

PROPERTY FROM
A PRIVATE COLLECTION
*31
MARWAN
(SYRIAN, B. 1934)
each: Untitled
(i) signed and dated ‘MARWAN 73’ (upper left)
(ii) signed and dated ‘MARWAN 72’ (lower right);
(iii) signed and dated ‘marwan 73’ (lower right)
(i) oil on canvas
(ii) pencil on paper
(iii) pastel on paper
(i) 35 x 51¿in. (89 x 130cm.)
(ii) 8º x 10¿in. (21 x 25.7cm.)
(iii) 19¬ x 25Ωin. (50 x 65cm.)
(i) Painted in 1973
(ii) Executed in 1972
(iii) Executed in 1973
US$100,000-150,000
AED370,000-550,000
PROVENANCE:
(i) Galerie Michael Hasenclever, Munich.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
(ii) Anon. sale, Galerie Bassenge Berlin, 26 November 2011, lot 8198.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
(iii) Anon. sale, Galerie Bassenge Berlin, 26 November 2011, lot 8199.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.
Ephemeral and vulnerable in the swift notation of their equally random and
careful brushwork, it is with certainty that any work by the pioneer of artistic
expression and Arab Modernism Marwan can capture, enchant and captivate
its viewer by transporting them on a tender journey into the multi-dimensional
realm of the inner psyche. Sufusing his art with a light through a use of
rhythmically superimposed layers of transparencies that recall the magic of
Oriental cities and tales, to stand in front of a work by Marwan is to partake in
an intimate experience that is simultaneously universal and mystic.
Having spent the last six decades in Germany where he currently resides,
Marwan’s solid inspiration and appreciation for German Post-War art is not a
coincidence. Studying with fellow artist Georg Baselitz under the mentorship
of artist Hans Trier, a leader in the Tachisme movement, Marwan’s paintings
magnifcently succeed in deeply refecting his own identity as a wanderer
between the two worlds - as a German pioneer of European Modernism with a
close connection to the cultural legacy and spiritual tradition of the Arab world.
Within the schism of these two opposites, Marwan overcomes a painful
longing, hopeful anticipation and human loneliness in his quest to passionately
display and explain his world through his paintings. Restricting himself to
few simple and essential themes, most prevalently the head, which has in the
coming years and decades become Marwan’s almost sole theme, he conceives
of the head as a metaphor of his world - as a landscape of the soul and as the
great orb of the universe. By reiterating this image over and over, in hundreds
of variations, it becomes clear that the capacity for the life of these heads is
astounding; they stand for the whole body and thus for the human being in
its entirety.
In 1973 Marwan received a scholarship for the Cité des Arts and was able to
realise the long life dream of his youth. Since his beginnings as a student of
Arabic literature in university, it was Marwan’s sole intention to study and live
in Paris, which he felt was the epicentre of emerging cultural and philosophical
practice. His works from the 1960s in Berlin spoke of an underlying sense
of soul searching and attempt to fnd a reconciliation between his longing
for the west and his consequent longing for the Orient. Surrealist yet deeply
Expressionist, his work took on a colour palette of dark and sultry tones
but in Paris, his encounter with Impressionism imparted an almost jovial
undertone to his works; shifting away from darker palettes, Marwan started
94