Retamas Blancas
Description
Medium: Oil on board
Size: 60 x 50 cm
Signed lower right
Signed and titled on the back
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner.
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity by the Saleh Barakat Gallery.
Location
Beirut
Description
Labibe (Bibi) Zogbe discovered her interest in fine arts at a young age and received her formal training in painting under the tutelage of the Bulgarian artist, Dimitrof Bogdan. She emigrated to San Juan, Argentina, at the age of sixteen to marry her betrothed, Domingo Samaja. In the decade that followed her move, she engaged in the art of literature, and she only began showing her paintings professionally in the 1930s. She became the mistress of a well-known Argentinian artist Benito Quinquela Martin and began exhibiting all over South America and Paris. In Mexico she began a friendship with Polish artist Tamara De Lempicka who painted several portraits of Zogbe. She returned to Lebanon in 1947 upon the invitation of the Lebanese government. There, she was decorated with the Lebanese Cedar-Medallion of Excellence.
The profusion of flowers in her work evokes an eternal spring through the thousand vibrantly prismatic colors that blaze vividly through the swaying lacework of intertwining branches. With a “fanfare of colors”, she depicts the bursting of life in the buds, bougainvillea in full bloom, the garlands of the coral tree, the freshness of white laurel or chrysanthemum, the flowering blossoms of the apple and the cherry tree. Writing of Bibi Zogbé, Charles Corm says: “All the flowers of the world smile on us a day and then are gone, but her flowers will never perish away for she has put into them the clear immortal fire of her heart. These are flowers which perfume now our nights and will in future times prove a witness to the grandeur of a soul sprung from our rocky soil…”
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