Galerie Claude Lemand

Shafic Abboud, Portrait in Mount Lebanon, March 1969, 1969, Photo, 100x100cm, Courtesy of Sami Karkabi, Succession of Shafic Abboud and Galerie Claude Lemand

Founded in 1988 in Paris, Claude Lemand Gallery is one of the first galleries in Europe to promote Modern Arab Artists who had settled in the West. The gallery promotes artists in solo and group exhibitions and regularly publishes accompanying exhibition catalogues and monographs. Before opening his gallery, Claude Lemand was a university professor until 1988. A second gallery space opened in 2008, dedicated to retrospectives.

Galerie Claude Lemand presents works by Shafic Abboud (1926-2004) and Abdallah Benanteur (b. 1931) who were both influential Arab artists in the 20th and 21st century. Abboud paintings are a manifesto for freedom, colour and light, while appearing as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. His work reflects his close relationship to Lebanon, to its landscapes and his childhood memories. Algerian artist Benanteur created lyrical landscapes infused with the light of his Mediterranean homeland, abstract or dotted with silhouettes of Algerian people walking. A new landscape, a kind of heavenly garden, an enchanted earth.