Lawrie Shabibi is pleased to announce that Tate Modern has acquired Eclypse (1978) by Nabil Nahas.Eclypse was one of four major paintings from 1977-1979 exhibited at our solo presentation at Art Dubai Modern in 2014. These works formed the basis of Nahas' first two solo shows in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the last four decades they have only been shown together once, at his 2010 retrospective in Beirut.
The paintings in this series demonstrate Nahas' early interest in Islamic art, especially its abstract, geometric and chromatic qualities which still influence his work today. Considered ground breaking at the time - very few artists of Middle Eastern origin had attempted to do something similar - these complex geometries, poised between order and chaos, anticipate his much later fractal paintings for which he is perhaps best-known.
Eclypse is a masterpiece of Nahas' early geometric series, showing the clear transition between his ordered, almost transparent yellow paintings and his bolder, freer style of painting that has come to characterize much of his subsequent work.
