Willy Aractingi

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Willy Aractingi (Lebanese) is an internationally acclaimed painter renowned for his depictions of fables, fantasies, landscapes, and still-lifes. He wields a careful arrangement of colour gradation, form, line and shadow in his compositions, bringing to life a vivid realm inhabited by folkloric creatures and surreal landscapes. Compared to the likes of Douanier Rousseau and Paul Gauguin, Aractingi infused his work with humour and playfulness. Despite his lack of formal artistic training, he embraced his identity as a self-described naive primitive artist. Born in New York and raised in Cairo, Aractingi eventually settled in Beirut in the late 1940s. He began painting at a young age, but his work as an artist alternated between intermittent periods of intense creation and hiatus. A few years prior to the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, he established a modern art gallery. This gallery provided a platform for renowned artists such as Alekos Fassianos, Niki De St Phalle, and Alan Davies, possibly inspiring Aractingi to return to painting in his adult years. He would go on to produce approximately 1500 works in his lifetime, mostly between 1973-1975 and then again from 1982-2003. Between 1989 and 1995, he worked on his magnum opus, illustrating the 244 fables penned by the French poet Jean de La Fontaine. Aractingi’s family generously contributed more than 200 artworks inspired by Jean de la Fontaine's fables to the Sursock Museum several years after his passing. In 2017, the museum paid tribute to the artist with a retrospective exhibition titled “Les Mondes de Willy Aractingi” (The Worlds of Willy Aractingi), featuring over 120 works created between 1973 and 2003. Aractingi’s artistic legacy extends across the globe, with over 100 solo and collective exhibitions gracing prestigious venues in Beirut, Paris, London, New York, Nice, and Antibes. His works have found a cherished place in both public and private collections, including the esteemed Mokbel Art Collection and the Jean de la Fontaine Museum in Château-Thierry, France.