Siege Trilogy - Man's Siege

 

Man's Siege

 In 1986, I called for establishing a new art group (Horizon). This group, which condemned aggression and promoted peace and love through art was a hit in the art arena. Many local and international magazines and other media outlets covered the two shows of the Horizon group before it was dismantled after my arrest and torture. I was later sentenced to death three times!

However, one international senior sculptor, Ishmael Fatah, who had many achievements worldwide was watching me and was quite impressed and excited about my work. He decided to buy my sculpture titled “The Chair of Orwell’s Farm”. http://www.amerfatuhiart.com/Gallery.html

 In 1992, I had a two-man show titled “Siege”, where Ishmael approached me and purchased one of my three-part artworks (Siege - Man's Siege). This original and coveted piece belongs to the LOGOGRAMISM style that I created almost two years after I was released from the Security police detention center in 1988.

 It depicts a head derived from the pictograph writing system that was created in the Eighth Millennium, BC. This is the period when Mesopotamian clay tokens originated.

The Epic of Gilgamesh also helped me to come up with colorful backgrounds when I was studying the Eleventh Tablet of the Great Flood, while the colorful triangles inside the main figure were made to match the clay cone mosaic from the Uruk temple and the famous Standard of Ur.

Artist and art lover Ishmael told me the next day when he invited me to enjoy a bottle or two of beer (maybe more!) with grilled fish (Masgouf) by the riverside: “You almost had me crying out of joy. I have immediately fallen in love with this work. The colors, the Logogramism theme, and the technique of (colors and textures) make it one of its kind”.

 Subject: Siege Trilogy - Man's Siege

Technique: Acrylic, Solvent Inks & Sand on Canvas

Measurements: 70 x 90 | 39.3 x 27.5 Inches

Date & Price: 1992 | $21,000

The painting is held in the collection of the late prominent modern art sculptor Ishmael Fatah

An Ekphrases of my soul in words and colors

 

The Date-palm Wounds

 Technique: Acrylic on Stretched paper canvas

Measurements: 24 x 35.25

Date: 2021

Price: $25,000 | Private Collection

The Date-palm Wounds

• Amer Hanna Fatuhi •

 

In our first home

Where kingdoms were established

And fortresses collapsed

in my homeland

that gave birth to the numbers and letters

Where the rivers are Biblical

And where love

bridges of soul

They came suddenly

From dusty deserts

barren

In the name of Allah

And the name of Al-Futuh*

They took me from the Tigris

Took me away from my colors

and my paintings

crucify me upside down

gouge out my eyes

They rip my heart out by force

Hoping that I will tell

but what I may say?

When there is nothing in my mind and heart

Other than a palm tree

And a revealing gorgeous girl

from every cell in me

leaks like a fragrant scent

*****

In our last home

I miss you

like a child

he laughs sometimes

and sometimes wail

Coming back does not help me

And departing can not cure me

in every sun

and moon

I just want to hug you

and a Babylonian palm-tree

that since losing the two rivers

burdened with wounds

 

June. 12, 2022

 

 

* Al-Futuh means religious/Islamic conquests

BEFORE THE LOGOGRAMISM CAME THE RINO’s PERIOD

 

THE RINO’s PERIOD

From the Epic of Creation ENUMA ELISH and artist Fatuhi’s imagination, the War paintings and sculptures were created.

“When in the height heaven was not named, and the earth beneath did not yet bear a name, came the Rhinoceros!”

In artist Amer’s mind, Tiamat (the personification of chaos in the Babylonian Genesis) is not a dragon but a kind of an enormous evil Rhinoceros!

Also in his mind, when the military is led by a tyrant, it is like mixing an uncontrolled power and ultimate stupidity. The result is a recipe for the absence of freedom, horror, and gruesome death!

It doesn’t take a rocket scantest to figure out that, when mingling such elements the ignition of war becomes inevitable.

The 80s of Amer were all about fighting fire with fire and fighting the war with art. In the end, the war died and the artwork was long-lived!

 Subject: Tiamat's Cattle

Technique: Acrylic on Canvas

Measurements: 100 x 70 Cm | 39.3 x 27.5 Inches

Date: 1989

Price: $35,000

90s art style that enriches the contemporary arts!

 

What do you know about LOGOGRAMISM

One of the most compelling contemporary art styles?

 Many worldwide Museums, Art Galleries, and Private Collections hosted and have been enjoying LOGOGRAMISM, a one-of-a-kind authentic art style considered like a creative wormhole connecting the beauty and the blueprint discoveries of the ancient world (The Land of Eden) with the most challenging life issues of the present times and the future!

 From Israel, England, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, Poland, Spain, Australia, Canada, and the U.S.A., art lovers are amazed by this remarkable beauty created by the internationally appreciated artist Amer Hanna Fatuhi!

 To learn and enjoy LOGOGRAMISIM artworks explore some of his artwork that will be exhibited this year in New York & LA or view his 90s artwork visit  http://www.amerfatuhiart.com/Gallery.html

Tenacity, the mystery of the heart & mind!

 

TENACITY The Future’s Mirror That Reflects The Past!

Tenacity is a mix of creative artsy derived from the “Land of Eden” rich history and the artist's deep passion that satisfies the soul, the heart, and the mind.

This 1993 artwork by Amer Hanna Fatuhi, was created using Mixed Media on Stretched paper canvas.

Style: Logogramism

Measurements: 9.3/8 x12 Cm

Date & Price: 1993 - $8,500

Location: Private Collection

To learn and enjoy LOGOGRAMISIM artworks visit:

https://www.ea-artg.com/spotlight/art-view/108-spotlight/art-view/220-logogramism-art-style

Wounding the Dark”, An Ekphrastic Poem

 

 

FATUHI’s EKPHRASTIC POEM

 “Wounding the Dark”

 Amer Hanna Fatuhi, the prominent visual artist, historian, and professional writer was one of ten celebrated artists/authors from the entire world to be featured in the November/December 2009 issue of World Literature Today WLT, the renowned magazine, published by the University of Oklahoma. WLM ran a special section titled “Voices Against the Darkness: Imprisoned Writers who Could not be Silenced”.

The WLM study is about creative individuals who suffered brutal persecution and torture, yet they continued giving voice to the voiceless people worldwide. The main title of that academic section in part was motivated by Amer’s poem “Wounding the Dark” an ekphrastic poem that is a vivid description of the artwork. In 2007, twenty years later Artist Amer Hanna Fatuhi created six powerful paintings inspired by his 1987 famous poem: WOUNDING THE DARK

 Fatuhi was featured through his poem in English “Wounding the Dark,” which was translated from the artist's homeland's official language by Amer Fatuhi and Daniel T. Ames alongside his astonishing painting that carries the same title as well as a short biography on P61. It is quite an honor for a celebrated artist like Fatuhi to be selected among these ten gigantic artists/authors of the 20th century.

To read the full poem in English visit http://www.amerfatuhiart.com/Sale.html

 To read the entire WLM study (as a PDF file) click the link below:

http://www.amerfatuhiart.com/article_Voices%20Against%20the%20Darkness.html

 Courtesy of UR Magazine www.UR-mag.com

Subject: Wounding the Dark II

Technique: Acrylic & Mixed-Media on Canvas

Measurements: 30 x 40 Inches

Date: 2007

Price: $30,000

Portrait

 

AMER FATUHI

The Many Portrait Art Techniques & Styles

The common portrait is a figurative painting, drawing, photograph, engraving, or sculpture of a person, displaying a face or a head and shoulders. Before the beginning of the modern art movements, the purpose of the traditional portrait was to depict the exact features of the subject (a person).

 However, painting a royal family, King, queen, or a group of prominent people was also considered part of the portrait types!

Various modern methods and techniques in the portrait have been used since the emergence of modern art in the late 19th century. Each artist executed their work, figurative or non-figurative, according to the personal vision or the movement style; Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani's portraits are the best examples of modern art portraits.

EA art Gallery for Modern & Contemporary arts www.EA-ArtG.com focuses on displaying a variety of styles and techniques. It also offers art classes. The enclosed image with this article depicts three portraits made of acrylic on canvas by artist Amer Hanna Fatuhi. Artist Fatuhi executed these artworks using different styles, from realistic to expressionism with heavy brush strokes to another expressionism portrait in sharp colors on a flat 2D picture plane.

 Movements and Styles in Visual Art, By Amer Hanna Fatuhi, 1986, P 71

MCR Featured Artwork by Amer Hanna Fatuhi

 Fleeing Paradise

Amer Hanna Fatuhi, a well-known visual artist, has been featured on the covers of several national and international magazines and papers over the last two decades. One of his unique paintings, titled Fleeing Paradise, featured on the front cover of the Multicultural Review magazine, is the nearest and dearest to his heart. http://www.amerfatuhiart.com/article_The%20Concealed%20Gift%20of%20Our%20Society.html

 
This remarkable painting that depicts the artist’s ordeal of escaping the secret police’ detentions and torture and fleeing his homeland looking for a new home of hope is considered a masterpiece by many art critics.
Since 1988 Fatuhi, a scholar in visual art and ancient Mesopotamian history started using pictograph symbols created thousands of years before the Cuneiform and the hieroglyphic writing systems.
This unique style successfully reflects his feelings and experience on canvas. What makes his artwork so powerful is the unique technique of mixing colors with layers of different elements to create an attractive texture that gives the audience a challenging mixed impression of beauty and brutality!

To learn more about his style, read the artist statement (Thinking Out of the Box) on his official website http://www.amerfatuhiart.com/Statement.html

 

Subject: Fleeing a Paradise

Technique: Acrylic on Canvas

Measurements: 36 x 36 Inches

Date: 2006

Price: $ 30,000

LOGOGRAMISM Created By Artist Amer Hanna Fatuhi

 LOGOGRAMISM ART STYLE

 

The Art of Bridging the Past and the Future!

At the beginning of 1988 artist, Amer Hanna Fatuhi, who became an international figure after winning the 1984 UNESCO Award and was featured in national and European art and cultural magazines, decided to leap from the Rhinoceros period RP of his 1985 One-man show "Home of Madness". As many art critics wrote about, this artistic period has dominated Fatuhi's artwork since his first One-man art exhibition, The Hard Time, 1981.

Artist Fatuhi was so wise to not jump in the dark but to walk gradually by blending his three compositions in one challenging path that contained:

1- The Minimal Symbols and Signs on a two-dimension background; most of these paintings appeared in his work when he was a university student. In those artworks, Fatuhi used mixed media and symbols derived from space and physics theories with pictograph, cuneiform symbols, a single word or a phrase from his published poems, i.e.,  Adam & Eve, The Everlasting Cold, Nadia, The Sorrow of Lady L, and A Freedom to Nowhere!

2- His second One-man show's main purpose was to demonstrate the artist's capability in figurative art while depicting metaphysical themes. Artist Fatuhi borrowed one simple technique from that show, not from the large paintings but the simplified Rhinoceros head that dominated his sketches.

 3- In his Pictographic 1988 new line of work, artist Fatuhi used the head of the Rhinoceros as a colorful background to fill it with Logogram/pictograph symbols. These symbols were derived from the Mesopotamian 3D Clay Token writing system founded during the Neolithic period between 8000-5600 BC, more than 10,000 years ago!

By the end of that year, artist Fatuhi created over 200 artworks, mostly Monoprint art and Hot Printing, a technique he created in the same year. These artworks traveled the world and became the artist's hallmark among other modern and postmodernist artists. Many European, Canadian, and U.S. museums collected those works and hosted Artist Fatuhi and his new unique artworks, especially after his 1992 Two-man exhibition SIEGE and his two groundbreaking One-man exhibitions THE CHAMBER, 1992, and LOOKING FOR ANOTHER PARADISE,1994.

 Like how Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Picasso were influenced by Japanese art, Tahitian women, and African masks & sculptures, artist Fatuhi focused on exploring and studying the Kishian Pictograph writing system (From Kish, the first city-state after the great Mesopotamian flood). Since then, he has become the only worldwide artist who created this one-of-a-kind artwork style called in 1992, LOGOGRAMISM.

It is no secret that Fatuhi's academic background and expertise in fine arts and ancient Mesopotamia motivated him to create LOGOGRAMISM to illustrate modern times' challenges freely. Being a well-known rebel artist, he went beyond the traditional paintings and sculptures by departing in 2006 from the canvas and focusing on the frame. He also started creating artworks mixing multi-layers of sharp and neutral colors or using just one color with daylife materials to create texture impressions and visual effects. This thinking out of the box and no rules also allows the artist to create a panoramic 360-degree artwork, which builds his legacy over time!

To view Amer Hanna Fatuhi's remarkable artworks, view "Babylon, Love, Chaos, & Beyond" at the following link: http://www.amerfatuhiart.com/Gallery.html

 E. Elijah, Editor / Art Critic

 www.UR-mag.com