Bacha was born in 1932 to a cultivated family in the Beirut neighbourhood of Ras al-Nabaa.
Education
He enrolled at Academie Libanaise Des Beaux-Arts in 1954, where he was influenced by the work of Cesar Gemayel and Jean-Paul Khoury, as well as that of Italian painter Fernando Manetti.He received a scholarship to continue his studies in Paris in 1959, first at the National School of Fine Arts, then at the Grand Chaumiere academy, with Henri Goetz.
During his time in France, Bacha the figurative artist began to experiment with abstraction. By 1968 he was leaning toward expressionism, while developing Lebanese themes.
Bacha’s career as a visual artist was marked by formal restlessness. He worked in ceramics, tapestry, jewelry, and collaborated with photographer Ghassan Kitmitto on works combining improvised painting upon photographic prints. In the early ’70s he illustrated the poetry collections of Alain Jouffroy, as he did the works of Lebanese poet Nadia Tueni, in 1983, and an Italian translation of Leopold Sedar Senghor’s poetry.
In all simplicity, without ever playing the flayed, the tortured, the pretentious, Amine el-Bacha was a complete artist.
He often turned towards peace and joy, he liked to trace in his paintings the playful poetry of the small details of everyday life. He also excelled in portraying, especially in his watercolors, the charm of a Mediterranean region without borders.
Incurably optimistic, even at the height of the war, Amine el-Bacha had not stopped painting flowers, hearts, palm trees, fruits, white clouds on blue horizons illuminated by a thousand suns and crossed by the free bird. A motif that can be found in almost all his paintings. "It comes spontaneously. I can not say what they(Birds) represent. I just feel it has to be there", he admitted without trying to philosophize his pictorial gesture.
"Forms without artifice, opening the way to his ultimate, pluralistic, eclectic and tolerant goal; embracing everything of value." - Paul Audi on the artist. Excerpt from 'Les Enluminures De Amine El Bacha'
"Thanks to Amine El Bacha, colors become libertine, voluptuous, generous. An exciting odyssey, because his talent washed over us, carrying us away almost by accident, without our noticing it, making us see ourselves as we really are." - Paul Audi. Excerpt from 'Les Enluminures De Amine El Bacha'
One can see musical influences in his work as his uncle and brother Toufic (father of pianist Abdel-Rahman el-Bacha) were both accomplished musicians.
Amine El Bacha’s paintings reflect a profound artistic experience that arises from his travels and wanderings through different cities, his time spent in cafés, watching the world go by.
The realms evoked in his work are studies of everyday life; through a familiar treatment of Oriental atmospheres and forms, he manages to reveal the unexpected that lurks at their heart.
The space of his creation thus transforms into a theatrical one, realistic and sometimes fantastical.
He went away, like the free bird that he was, towards the blue sky with the white clouds that he loved to depict in his paintings ... This artist always radiant universe, will leave a trace in the history of modern Lebanese painting. - Zena Zalzal
