Marionette (1983) by MARWAN KASSAB-BACHIDalloul Art Foundation
Commonly known as ‘Marwan’, Marwan Kassab-Bachi was born in Damascus in 1934. He moved to Germany in 1957 and enrolled in the Hochschule der Bildende Künste in Berlin, and completed his training under the supervision of the German artist Hann Trier (1915-1999).
Between 1978 and 1983, the painter created a series of portraits of little puppets. Through these artworks like Marionnette painted in 1983, he blurred the boundaries between abstraction and figuration.
Sitting in the middle of the composition, the puppet, ‘al-duma’, is inanimate and seems to be passive. Again, he worked with a palette of warm colors and created a rhythm with interwoven lines that compose the limbs of the toy’s body.
He also applied dashes of paint, like stains or dots, which give an impression of a puzzle: a technique similar to the French trend of ‘Tachisme’ from the 1950s consisting in applying spontaneous brushstrokes, drips and blobs of paint straight from the tube.
Even if it is intended for children, this object gives rise to numerous interpretations in the collective imagination. It is effectively a pure reproduction of a living being, which is, however, freely manipulated by the user.
Marwan highlighted this symbolism and established a correlation with existentialist concepts including the meaning of life, and fate.
From the full biography of Marwan Kassab-Bachi by Arthur Debsi
