In the present painting, a mother embraces a new-born, her eyes fixated towards a man on horseback peering into the horizon. Being himself the son of two Armenian refugees, Paul Guiragossian grew up in Jerusalem before resettling in Lebanon. Often separated from his mother and preoccupied his whole life with questions over his own cultural identity, Paul Guiragossian developed a special bound with Lebanon, which was to him a land of hospitality but also of suffering. This is the place that separated him from his native roots but where he found a new identity, where he got married and built a family before losing his son Ara at birth, the place which he frequently left but always came back to. Le Trajet is a powerful tribute to Guiragossian’s life, his wounds, but most importantly all the things he cherished. The artist became one of the most celebrated painted in Lebanon and Europe. He passed away in Beirut in 1993, after finalizing a last work, his masterpiece, dedicated to his family.
Le Trajet is a stunning composition, deeply personal in content yet universal in its rendition. It echoes a series of paintings created in the 1960s by Paul Guiragossian in response to the ongoing plight of Armenian refugees. The recurrence of this theme in the artistic production of Guiragossian bears witness to the heaviness that exile upheld on the artist’s life and psyche. However, his compositions bear no tragic nor pathetic connotations, and act on the contrary as the embodiments of a hope that Guiragossian cultivated throughout his life, that of finding peace and solace within his art and family. Painted in the same tones as Karantina Camp (circa 1964, Replica Shoes ’s London, 20 April 2016, lot 330), the present composition could almost be viewed as a sequel to this previous piece which came to show us the resilience of a community and the potential to rebuild one’s life no matter the circumstances. As such, Le Trajet is a poignant record of Guiragossian’s renewed faith in life and humanity.
Bibliography:
Sam Bardaouil & Till Fellrath, Paul Guiragossian: Displacing Modernity, 2018