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Moustafa Farroukh occupies a central position in the formation of Lebanese modern painting, bridging the transition from academic discipline to a locally rooted modern aesthetic. Initially trained in Beirut under the modernist painter Habib Serour, he continued his studies at the Regia Accademia di Belle Arti di San Luca in Rome, completing his formation in 1927 before refining his style in Paris under Paul-Émile Chabas and Jean-Louis Forain. During these years, he participated in the Paris Salons and travelled through Spain, where he developed a lasting fascination with Andalusian architecture and light. Upon returning to Beirut in 1932, Farroukh established his studio as both a working space and an informal exhibition venue, becoming a central figure in the city’s emerging artistic life and a lecturer at the American University of Beirut. His practice integrated academic rigour with a distinctly Levantine sensibility, combining the compositional clarity of European realism with a social and cultural awareness specific to Lebanon’s experience under the French Mandate. Farroukh’s oeuvre is characterised by its humanistic tone and deliberate modernisation of local subject matter. His depictions of labourers, nudes, and pastoral or urban Lebanese scenes reveal a painter attentive to the ethical and sensory dimensions of everyday life. Through his confident brushwork and a restrained palette, he produced works that privilege material presence over sentimentality. The artist’s introduction of the nude into the Lebanese exhibition circuit marked a turning point in the visual culture of the region. Works such as The Two Prisoners (1929) challenged prevailing moral codes, translating the female figure into an allegory of confinement and liberation. Later compositions, notably Mother Sewing the Lebanese Flag in Front of Her Daughter (1950), re-articulated this dialogue within a nationalist framework, merging modernist language with civic symbolism. Technically versatile, Farroukh alternated between oil, watercolour, and conte, often reworking the same motif across media to explore subtleties of form and atmosphere. His realism—neither provincial nor derivative—asserted the relevance of the human figure and landscape as vehicles for cultural self-definition. Alongside contemporaries such as César Gemayel and Omar Onsi, he helped establish a modern Lebanese school of painting grounded in both international exchange and local experience.
