Elie Kanaan born in Beirut 1926 - 2009, quickly became a self-educated and very gifted painter, endow with a particular style.
Already in his early twenties, he showed a very clear way in expressing his own colors throughout his first oil-paintings. After that his meeting with famous painters such as the French painter Georges Cyr, will allow him to prove his talent. The colors are bright but deeply worked, the touches are audacious but never outrageous.
After making his first experiences in Lebanon, he won in 1957 the first price in painting at the "Salon du Printemps", as well as the UNESCO's price in 1958. this will allow him to get a fellowship to Paris where he will consort the Free Academy of the Grande Chaumière.
During a few years, he enjoyed traveling to Europe and elsewhere. Since 1962, many itinerant exhibitions were organized from Paris to New York, from Sao Paolo to Belgrade, from Moscow to Alexandria. All these places will inspire the artist,but it is the ambiances of Saint Germain-des-Près and Montparnasse, in the 50s and 60s, from which he will keep in mind odors,moves and memories that will forever mark his work. In 1967, Elie Kanaan will be awarded with the Prix Vendôme which devotes his recognition in Europe.
Back in Beirut, he won't be one of those high society painters, nevertheless, he will impose himself throughout the years as much as in his uprightness as in art, without retreating in his solitude. He will become professor at the Lebanese Academy of Art. He will devote the major part of his energy to the preparation of international exhibitions that will open the door wider horizons.
The international recognition for his work will worth being part of the most important collections in this world. Noticed in his time by André Malraux, Elie Kanaan has reached the mad impulses that all great artists are gifted with, a meticulous and an expertise at work. Conductor of colours, Elie Kanaan works on compositions that often illustrate in a same canvass a mixture of pulsions of life and death, of joy and anguish that always leave an attentive eye on a immediate glean of hope. Inspired by the Lebanese mountain, Elie Kanaan's recent works clarifies the soul on meditation. The voluptuous colours shade under a sensible look. It is without any doubt that this sincere way and that will to create a "beautiful work" that give Elie Kanaan's paintings this unexplainable mark of distinguish of all the other great painters and its timeless resonance.
