Written by WAFA ROZ

Yvette Achkar was born in 1928 in Sao Paolo, Brazil, a twin in a family of nine children.  Born to Lebanese parents, she was ultimately raised in Lebanon. Her first love was not visual art, but music; she aimed to become a professional pianist, but was rejected when she applied to the Lebanese National Conservatory. Achkar was physically petite and was explicitly denied entry to the conservatory due to her tiny hands.

After her application did not yield the hoped-for results, Fernando Manetti, a professor of art at ALBA (Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts), suggested that Achkar shifts to visual arts instead. She applied to the academy and was accepted, crediting her sharpened sensitivity to aesthetics through music for her relatively smooth transition to painting. Achkar pursued her artistic studies at ALBA from 1947 to 1952 and was a member associated with a group of young artists who considered themselves pioneers, a new generation that was determined to break with the artistic traditions of the past and move into new, freer forms of expression. Achkar’s career took off after she graduated from ALBA when she went to Paris to study on a scholarship granted by the French government. After concluding her studies, Achkar returned to Lebanon, where she taught painting at ALBA and the National Institute of Fine Arts of the Lebanese University from 1966 to 1988.

Trained by Manetti and influenced by Georges Cyr, Achkar began as a figurative painter. Later, she developed a personal style in line with abstract expressionism, characterized by the use of bold colors and strident yet delicate lines to convey a sense of the artist’s emotions and inner self.

Achkar tries to take full control of each move in her oil paintings. She spends hours gazing at the canvas before approaching it with color, creating tension through feathery, almost splinter-like brushstrokes and blurring lines between positive and negative space. Though in many works her hand is evident in her fragmented brushwork, in others the artist conveys a strong will to erase the labor from of the painting, to step beyond the physical presence of the brush by brushing, spraying, sponging and rubbing until the viewer is left with pure, emotional, even spiritual color. Achkar’s oeuvre creates a sense of vastness, which might stem from her personal experiences of space; as a child, she used to hide in corners, overwhelmed by the sheer size of the world around her, and as a small individual continued to perceive the earth as outsized through her adulthood

Yvette Achkar’s first solo exhibition in 1960 at La Licorne Gallery in Beirut was a success, and she became a recognized artist almost overnight. The artist still lives in Lebanon.

Sources

Abillama Nour Salamé, Marie Tomb, Amin Maalouf, joseph Tarrab, Cesar Nammour, Maha Azize Sultan, Faycal Sultan, and Gregory Bucakjian. Art from Lebanon: Modern and contemporary artist 1880-1975 V I. Beirut, Lebanon: Wonderful editions, 2012. 

Fani, Michel. Dictionnaire de la peinture au Liban. Paris: Escalier, 1998.

Farouk, Youssef. “إيفيت أشقر رسامة المعاني التي تثق بالتجريد." Al ARAB, November 25, 2015, 8.

Khal, Helen. The woman artist in Lebanon. Beirut, Lebanon: The Institute, 1987

Khal, Helen, Cesar Nammour, Gabriela Schaub. Resonances 82 Lebanese Artists Beirut, Lebanon: Fine Arts Publishing,2011

"Yvette Achkar." YouTube. January 12, 2015. Accessed September 28, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVgrHx1A4aM