Alfred Basbous (1924-2006) and his brothers Michel and Joseph were forerunning figures in the history of modern sculpture in Lebanon. Since the 1950s, they placed Rachana, uphill the town of Batroun in North Lebanon, on the map of the art and culture scene. They made their native remote village an open sky museum and organised festivals and events, including the International Sculpture Symposium that was held from 1994 to 2004. The Basbous Brothers became highly mediatized profiles and were invited to show their works around the world.

Alfred Basbous started his personal career with an exhibition at Galerie Alecco Saab in 1958. In 1960, he received a grant from the French Government to pursue his studies at the Beaux-Arts de Paris under the tutorship of sculptor and medallist René Collamarini. In 1974, he was awarded the Prize of the Alexandria Biennale.

This slim and elegant piece was executed one year before, in 1973. It depicts the shape of a seated naked woman with a child curled up on her knees, the face laid on her chest. The topic of maternity is universal across the history of art, especially with the Virgin and Child – it is recurrent in Lebanese art, with, apart from numerous variants in the work of the Basbous brothers, a significant presence in the paintings of Paul Guiragossian.

Alfred Basbous reinvents this traditional theme into an arrangement of curvilinear shapes and textures crafted in wood. Cesar Nammour wrote, “Alfred Basbous sculpted slender shapes, with no sharp angle. Even in his cubic and rectangular structures, joints are always rounded. Sensitive and demanding, he polished the surfaces in the extreme, making them soft and sensual, when he allowed the stone to remain rough; the relief is more welcoming than disturbing.”