Jamal Joratli
Jamal Joratli is a Greece-based painter of Syrian origin.
Biography
Jamal was born in Salamiyah in 1961, and studied mechanical engineering at the University of Aleppo. He now resides and works in Greece, Athens, which he first visited in 1988.[1] He chose Greece "for its natural light and colors, which cannot be imitated even by the best photoshop application, and for its culture".[2]
Work
Exhibitions of his work jave been held in the United States (New York), Germany (Düsseldorf), Lebanon, Jordan, Dubai, China, and Greece.[3] His last exhibition (The Silk Road) took initially place in 2016 in Athens at the Benaki Museum, and it was later transferred to China, at the Dalian Modern Museum.
Style
According to Klaus Sebastian, Jamal uses tradition as a basis for his powerful paintings, while real life motifs are turned into "flowing colour energies". With his art, Jamal tries to look behind the sufaces, and to harmonically connect the oriental with the occidental artistic schools.[4]
Art professor Manos Stefanidis regards Jamal as a "pictor classicus" – in the way Giorgio de Chirico used the term, namely a painter first addressing the problem of positioning the subject in space – who integrates modern European painting in his art, "but with terms of locality and an emphasis on the personal agony of expression".[5]
Citations
Sources
- Angelopoulou, Athanasia (1 December 2018). "Jamal Joratli: the Arab artist who works in Athens and deifies it". iefimerida.gr (in Greek). Retrieved 3 October 2019.
- Jian, Chen; Jamal; Moraitou, Mina; Sebastian, Klaus; Stefanidis, Manos. Jamal – The Silk Road. Dalian Modern Museum.
- "The Silk Road by Jamal in the Musem of Modern Art". matrix24.gr (in Greek). 13 January 2016. Retrieved 3 October 2019.