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Lot description
CHANT AVEDISSIAN (EGYPTIAN 1951-2018) MAJIDA AL-ROUMI signed and inscribed CHANT AVEDISSIAN LE CAIRE lower centre gouache, stencil and metallic paint on card 49 x 69cm; 19 1/4 x 27 1/4in 52.5 x 72cm; 20 3/4 x 28 1/4in (framed) Property of a Lady, London Provenance Rose Issa Projects, London Acquired from the above by the present owner Exhibited London, Leighton House Museum, Rose Issa Projects: Chant Avedissian: Icons of the Nile, 1995 “I connect his work to Egyptian popular culture, the same way that Warhol is American popular culture. He wanted to communicate something, and it wasn’t about nostalgia or politics. It was about how artists manage to overcome tensions in order to be creative.” - Rose Issa The master of Egyptian Pop Art, Chant Avedissian fuses commercial popular culture and traditional arts in his iconic commentaries on the world around him. Avedissian was born in Cairo to an Armenian refugee family. After studying abroad at the School of Art and Design in Montreal and applied arts at the National Higher School of Decorative Arts in Paris, the artist begun a career in costume and textiles. However, in 1991, a friend commissioned him to create a portrait of renowned Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum (see note to lot 66). This inspired his Icons of the Nile series, which sought to capture the culture, romance and glamour of mid-twentieth century cosmopolitan Egypt through portraits of influential Egyptian figures. The present subject depicts Lebanese Egyptian soprano singer and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador Majida El Roumi Baradhy (born 1956). Her father was a Melkite Christian from Tyre, South Lebanon and her mother Egyptian; her father’s family had moved to Haifa, Israel in 1921 where the El Roumi home had been established as an artistic hub. Majida was exposed to the cultural scene of the Middle East from her youth and at 14, appeared on Télé Liban where she performed songs for Umm Kulthum. Majida released her first single in 1975 Am Behlamak (I'm dreaming of you, Lebanon) in collaboration with the Lebanese poet Said Akl. Released the same year at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, the song’s nostalgic and patriotic themes struck a chord with the nation. She has performed internationally at L'Olympia, Paris, where in 1998 her show was sponsored by the Lebanese First Lady Mona Herawi; at a sold-out show at the Royal Albert Hall in 1995 and at the opening of the Damascus Opera House in 2004. Alongside her music, Majida is also famed for her participation in international affairs and commitment to the welfare of Lebanese people. In 2001, she was appointed a Goodwill ambassador for the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization and has participated in numerous round-table discussions on the role of FAO ambassadors in combatting world hunger. She also attended the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia in 2012 for discussions regarding poverty in Beirut. Avedissian's portrait of Majida - who confidentially looks out at the viewer, pointing purposefully upwards in a gesture of conviction and faith - captures and immortalises her status both as a performer and philanthropist. Sourced from popular magazine imagery, Avedissian combined his stencils with a cultural and historical traditional visual language including Ottoman patterns and hieroglyphics alongside local imagery including bus tickets and birds and worked exclusively in local materials such as Egyptian corrugated cardboard. Avedissian’s devotion to handicraft, tradition and everyday experience in his artistic depictions of the cult of celebrity and the media-age sets his works distinctly apart from the aesthetics of mass-production which characterised American Pop Art.