Jouni Hassan Roumine 

Roumine (Lebanon), 1942

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Hassan Jouni studied at ALBA from 1959 to 1964, and received a grant to study in Spain in 1965. It is interesting to note the manner in which he experienced Latin and Christian culture in Spain, with the pictorial tradition that was directly derived from it. From the 1960s he made an abstract painting that was perhaps the only possible response to the complexity of the questions and the multiplicity of the situations that he had to address.

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Starting from this period, the abstract plans of his canvases included fragments and faces and, notably, he composed and constructed frontal characters and landscapes in a more realist way, portraying south Lebanon when problems of community identity were being articulated. This figurative painting wanted to be recognizable, and brushwork was part of its virtuosity.

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The Spanish component appeared in the elegance of his settings, in compositions that were always quickly thrown on the canvas.

 

An exhibition in 1980 at the Spanish Cultural Centre in Beirut clearly revealed the  covering of local themes and of painting with a figure at the centre of the canvas. Fifteen years after his sojourn in Spain, Jouni showed that he had assimilated its technical lessons.

In the multiple influences of European cultures on the different communities of Lebanon, Spain certainly played a less important role than France, Italy or Great Britain. From Renno to Charaf and Jouni, Spain nevertheless offered a continued presence through the painters who made long or short stays there.

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Which was Jouni’s audience? His first abstract canvases were not successful, but this had less to do with his painting than with his socialisation, with the reading of his community identity and the manner in which, before 1975, it was held in balance by the project of a national culture. In this mosaic, the criteria of taste and quality were not always based on national choices. Furthermore, who would have been able to impose or dictate them?

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From the moment Jouni made paintings that no one was waiting for, his work was liberated. The notion of frontal painting was linked to Oriental religious painting, a painting of presentation that is meant for showing. But Jouni changed the spectator’s gaze and the technical data of the canvas by his way of orienting space and form.