Saleh Barakat Gallery Art Collection - Farid Trad, Collector & Art Patron المجموعة الفنية لفريد طراد

Описание: Saleh Barakat Gallery Art Collection of Farid Trad - جاليري صالح بركات المجموعة الفنية لفريد طراد

Farid Trad - Collector and Art Patron

This exhibition (August - September 2023) pays tribute to Farid Trad, a witness of a time sealed away since 1969.

Farid Trad was an architect-engineer marking the several fields within and around the profession, its pedagogy, and its organization. His career spanned 43 years, from 1926 until he died in 1969. Born under the Ottoman period and educated under the French mandate in Lebanon and later in France, this exceptional figure eventually became one of the builders of the Lebanese Republic. He was the founding member of numerous institutions, including the ALBA, since the founding of its Architecture school in 1943 and the Order of Engineers and Architects in 1951, for which he served a year as president and occupied several positions and responsibilities in administration and was a member of the higher council of planning. As a staunch modernist, Trad fought with conviction for the planning of Beirut and the resolution of social housing within the city and in other towns and villages. He was a stern critic of the so-called Ecochard plan and had developed his urban study for Beirut, resolving crucial issues that were never addressed to this day.

Belonging to a generation that has seen historical, political, and social transformation, Trad was at the heart of the movement of Arab modernity. He was known as the brilliantly rigorous 'Mouhandes', by his friends, a lot of whom were practicing artists that had critical stakes in the development of a regional modernism. Trad began collecting his friends' artworks throughout his career. The resulting collection is a modernist constellation marking the several decades that ensued from the early 30s until the later 60s. From Elie Kanaan's nocturnal still lives and portraits to his pastoral depictions of the Lebanese country-side, to the light hues from Arminé and Harutiun Galentz Portraits, or to Paul Guiragossian's large paintings of scenes from the trope of the family, to other artists like Georges Cyr, Youssef Hoyek, Michel Basbous, Galentz and many others, the works that consolidate the Trad collection draw an image of a nearly golden time heavy with bustling transformations that are frozen right before the failures that succeeded in Lebanon after the 60s.

Rather than synthesizing this constellation of artworks into a singular vision, the works reveal each artist's journey within and around early modernism. While some were friends, others were masters.