Hussein Madi

Painter, sculptor and engraver, Hussein Madi received his initial training at ALBA.

Subsequently, he went to Rome where he enrolled at the Academia di Belle Arte and at the Academia di San Jacomo. In Rome, he did advanced research on cultural heritage in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt. He went back to Lebanon and taught sculpture and engraving at the Institute of Fine Arts of the Lebanese University and, from 1958 to 1962, at ALBA.

Since 1964 Madi has been living between Beirut and Rome.

He has been exhibiting in Europe since 1965.

Hussein Madi makes use of the art of calligraphy, consisting of symbols which were originally pictographs.

Madi tries to take these symbols back to the time when writing was half-picture, half-symbol.

He has thus reconciled the real, represented by a partial image, with the symbolic, connected with the inner life of man.

Between these two poles, he has built marvelous worlds, the realistic one which binds man to the earth and the symbolic one binding man to his conception of the world. In this manner, he satisfies both the eye and the mind at the same time.