Mohammed Resayes

Hewar Art Gallery, Riyadh
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1981 

Mohammed Resayes began to paint and draw in 1973 in high school in Riyadh, before travelling to Cairo to further nurture his paintings abilities. At this stage he based his technique on a close study of the art of abstract impressionist painters. He was attempting to integrate brushstrokes techniques of Impressionism art with the contracted, reassembled space of Cubism, depicting sceneries reminiscent of his rural background.

In the 1990s, Resayes became involved with the emergent expressionist movement of the Saudi pioneers who preceded him. On his return in Riyadh, he worked in the King Saud University as an art teacher, and became the president of the Art department a few years later. Among the large-scale paintings on which he worked are Waiting for The End (1985), Falcon and Spindle (1985) and his series Architectural Elements (1982), which all revolve around exile, pain and misery. The style of his works, particularly the composition of figures in space in Borrowed from Tradition (1980), owed much to the cubic style.

Like many of his contemporaries, beyond his thrive to contribute in the building of the Saudi art stage, El Resayes spent his life developing an aesthetic sensitivity and vision out of the diverse range of abstract influences that challenged artists of his era. In the 1980s he constructed a private mythical world, pouring into the canvas his acute awareness of the ongoing debate that opposed tradition to modernity, in his attempt to conciliate the everlasting and the transitory. Towards the end of his career, his style met a radical shift and evolved into single dark images embedded in a morass of obscure paint, confounding the Saudi art stage with a new figurative style and personal iconography.

In this particular work we are drawn to its centre; where a blue bearded man presumebly the Hafiz sits encircled by a group of veiled women who cling to their religious books. There is a palpable, spiritual desperation to this work. All mouths ajar, their facial expressions remain unreadable – breathing in and clinging onto words of spiritual guidance, but at the same time, breathing out a discomforting sense of insecurity. The vibrancy of their core – their central figure, seems to anchor them, bringing order to a somewhat disorienting visual. The flat picture plane creates the sense that they are hovering, but the archways that shelter them, seem to contain them in their place of worship and prayer.