Asma Fayoumi, has been a driver in the Arab art scene since the late 1960s. Born in Amman in 1943 she began her career amidst a mid-century school of Syrian Abstraction. She worked alongside Assad Arabi, Faek Dahdouh and others at a time when the Middle Eastern art scene was undergoing a critical transition into more contemporary forms of representation. The political climate at the time aslo prompted artist to take on call for social change.
In 1966, she had a solo show in Damascus that created a buzz and marked the start of a long series of solo and group exhibitions regionally and abroad, paving the way for subsequent generations of female painters in the Arab World. Her work is destinguished by expressionist representations of women and children; and by frantic and heavy brushtrokes and bewildered eyes peering out from underneath layers of paint.
Her most recent works in “The Person Within” [Ayyam Gallery Beirut, until Oct. 15, 2011] chronicles her work and displays her more recent fascination with the family as an insitution, especially in light of the current sociopolitical turmoil. She depicts mostly women as they seek to shield their children from troubled and uncertain environments.
[Information gathered from Ayyam Gallery]
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