Eliany
Art Reviews
Abstracts "Marc Eliany touches the heroic, the power of the symbol… His painting reduces rhythms to their essential. From his native Morocco, he does not paint the concrete object but powerful symbols, a transformation of his childhood milieu… In his allegory on canvases, Marc Eliany, does not express nostalgia but a desire to repossess the doors, the walls and landscapes of his native Morocco… His work expresses his deep and colorful spirituality, and his fierce sensuality…” a review from Gates of Welcome by Dr. Serge Ouaknine, Université du Québèc 1994
"In his exhibition 'Eroba Eroba', Marc Eliany uses colors and forms as symbols to tell a story about Europe from a non-European point of view… He expresses: hope for a better future… deception... persecutions... and he turns back to hope... Using a language of Symbolic Expressionists, this artist tells a painted tale in which he bridges between two worlds" Exerts from a review of Eroba Eroba by Dr Gabriele Kohlbauer, Vienna Jewish Museum, 1997
Reviews
National Archive, Ottawa,
Canada
January 20, 2005
C'est au Maroc, a Beni Mellal, qu'
Eliany a vu le jour en 1948. Il restera très
attaché à son pays natal, qu'il quitte
dès 1961, et y retournera régulièrement.
Son travail, reflète le retour constant vers les lieux de son enfance et la recherche
de ses racines. Dans sa peinture 'Orange en Vert,' Beni Melal qui l'a vu naître, au coeur de ses vergers, forment un océan vert sur lequel
flottent des oranges mythique.
Sa peinture, comme sa poesie
reduit les rythmes et les elans a l'essentiel.Il a participé à plusieurs expositions
au Canada, aux États-Unis et en Europe. Ses œuvres
figurent dans plusieurs collections publiques
et privées.
Introduction
Marc Eliany was born in the town of Beni Mellal, Morocco in 1948. He left Morocco for Israel in 1962 but remained very attached to his native country and returned there regularly. During his undergraduate studies in Jerusalem, he spent some time in Canada. Seduced by the beauty and the peaceful atmosphere of the country, he decided to settle in Ottawa in 1976 and pursued doctoral studies there. He worked for the United Nations and lived for brief periods in California and Austria and worked on assignments in the Far East and Latin America.
Essentially self-taught, his painter has nevertheless attended courses at the Tel Hay College of Art in Israel and at the Ottawa School of Art. The influences on his art are many. He admires the spontaneity of Moroccan painters Andre Elbaz, Maxime BenHaim and Shaibia, the composition of Klee and Chagall, the use of colours by painters in the Group of Seven, the lines and shapes of the Ameridian painting.
Marc Eliany uses Moroccan pigments that he mixes with oil, or more, rarely with acrylics, to create his canvases. He also works with colored paper pulp and collages techniques that allow him to produce highly textures surfaces.
“My work” he says, “reflects the constant return to the places of my childhood and the search for my roots.” He paints Morocco, not figuratively, but recapturing its most visible landmarks in a manner that transforms his memory of it. Additionally, his choice of Moroccan colors and symbols pays tribute to the tradition of tolerance towards strangers in that country.
Marc Eliany exhibited in Canada, United States and Europe. His works are included in several public and private collections.
October 2001
Marc Eliany, born in 1948 in Beni Melal, immigrated to Israel in 1961 and moved to Canada in
1976. He was educated at the Technion (1969-71), the
Hebrew University (1971-76) and Carleton and Ottawa Universities (1976-1981)...Eliany is a multidisciplinary artist dedicated to
documenting Jewish life in Morocco. He addresses issues relating to
inter-cultural tolerance in a symbolic expressionist fashion..."Eliany touches the heroic, the power of the symbol…
His painting reduces rhythms to their essential… His work expresses his
deep and colorful spirituality, and his fierce sensuality…” (Ouaknine, 1994).
Discussion
From a historical perspective, much artistic merit is found in Morocco’s material culture in the work of common
artisans and craftsmen. Western modern artists found artistic redemption
in it and Moroccan Jews made a significant contribution to it in creation and
diffusion. Given the strongly grounded
traditional patterns of artistic creation in Morocco, artists had to deviate
from them to break ground into modern and contemporary art forms. But until the
early 50’s, religious and traditional constraints remained potent and only
sustained exposure to external cultures, i.e., French, Israeli or North
American, made contemporary artistic expressions legitimate. There are
certainly many more artists to represent Moroccan Jewish artistic creation and
in due time, more will be written about them. Meanwhile, the four selected here,
Elbaz and BenHaim on one
side and Cohen-Gan and Eliany,
on the other side, certainly typify the breakthrough intocontemporary
art, forgetting not their roots.
Paintings and Photography
Marc Eliany, at the Museum Gallery of Safed's Artist Colony, May 25 through July 2, 2000.
Marc Eliany was born in Morocco
in an enchanting town at the foot of the Atlas Mountain: Beni
Melal. And he grew up as a child in Casablanca,
before immigrating to Israel at the age of 12. Israel was for him, as for most
Moroccan Jewry, the promise of ancestral dreams. Israel was the land of freedom
from persecution and Justice. But upon settlement in Israel, the reality was
different and Morocco became for him the land of dreams. And for many years,
Marc Eliany studied the land of the Maghreb and
engaged in an ongoing comparative analysis. In Israel, Moroccan Jewish culture
disappeared with the exception of caricatural
vestiges, too distant from the truth.
But in Morocco, 5000 Jews still lead the life they led for two thousand years. In "A Moroccan Pilgrimage" Marc Eliany brings a refreshing testimony on Jewish life in Fes. It is a sensitive review of life in a very old community, perhaps as old as the city itself, which was founded in 789 CE.
Jews contributed to Fes a
tradition of learning, for here even Maimonides came to study, rich and colourful arts and crafts and especially jewellery making, national trade and international commerce
and high court diplomacy. This was the place where even the dhimi
Jew was respected.
Nowadays, only 160 Jews live
in Fes, some young and some old. They no longer live in the old mellah we see in Marc's photos, but they
still congregate at the Rambam community
centre for celebrations or for bi-weekly ritual slaughter of innocent
chicken. They pray at the Ben Saadoun synagogue and they burry their dead in the
ancient cemetary, where saints are still revered.
Here the present remains a
testimony to a magnificient past.
Revue Eroba Eroba
Philip Levy, Mai 1998, Paris.
Une terre de faience
miroitante
Eliany - Le peintre d'un ciel de l'horizon
Il existe deux marques
distinctes, deux Eliany… Deux complexes réseaux,
souterrains et apparents à la fois qui constituent, construisent l'oeuvre et l'être. Jouet la trame est toute en même temps,
au jour et ajouré, féconde et secrète.
Le premier pan est celui d'une
évidence intérieure portée en lui…un héritage et d'une mémoire retirée et défassé par une conscience… Pourtant cet état guarde… une innocence blessée portée… dans le regard des
enfants déracinées… qu'il evoquera par cette fleur
colorée au rouge de coquelicot ou par ce corp de juif
comme crucifié… Mort ou vivant?
Mais derrière cette fausse
apparence et simplicité, Eliany continue de nous
mettre en garde par ce monde qu'il dévoile … Voila que ses origines orientales,
foulard délicat et coquet autour du cou… qui aussi signifie son appartenance;
ce voile comme une peau sur la peau peut s'apparenter … et frisonner
au moindre vent... Au moindre souvenir et nous revenons là, à ce qui
caractérise ce premier plan, morceau d'etoffe en
latin, de l' histoire, vue de cet artiste exprimée par une lumière mouillée,
inconsolable et qui donne aux choses un halo d'un autre monde, la merveille
d'une rosée matinale - l'éblouissement d'un avenir à définir.
Le baroque devient chez Eliany vu baroque d'approche, approches du ciel et de ses
mythes. Il ouvre par le ciel - le ciel lui même; et la ligne d'horizon n'est
plus à l'horizontal de la hauteur des yeux, mais basculée au sommet dont
l'altitude est infinie...... Alors il s'eprend d'une
musique intime dont sa main fébrile, comme celle du compositeur note et
griffonne des signes au plus près des mots et de la calligraphie, comme dans
"La Prière" où nous revient l'image du "Philosophe" de
Rembrandt... Des signes au plus loin du littéral, comme une vibration en toute
langue … C'est la marque du moment, l'empreinte d'un énervement... comme chez
Soutine...
Après ce lieu traditionnel, son
enfance, son nomadisme, l'autre pan est celui d'une projection dans un devers à
ellaborer plastiquement.
Ce deuxième volet qui doit rester
ouvert à votre imagination, concerne la fabrication, le processus même de
création de l'oeuvre. Oeuvre
subtile qui me semble régie sous l'ordre de la superposition et de
l'accolement. Dépôts et juxtapositions par deux axes: verticalité et
horizontalité, épaisseur et collage, cette procédure d'ellaboration
se produit en deux temps:
- le premier temps est classique
dans sa méthode: emprunts à partir des copies des oeuvres
de Cesanne par example.
- le deuxième temps est de
laisser s'échapper un ouïe, une sève de cette méthode, sève toute à la foit spirituelle, émotionnelle et savante.
Il par du mur, de sa matérialité …
puis transposé cette materialité
en ciel …Et ce mur rappelle … et repère de tout un peuple, le mur des
lamentations… où s'est posé peut-être, pour la première fois, ce premier regard
mouillé, innocent …
Et il le repousse
-ce regard- au plus loin- toujours- vers "ce mouillé" peint,
qu'il tente d'approcher sans vouloir y demeurer: "Le refugier dans
l'insaisissable" dit Nitzche, tendre, vers la
recherche d'une extase appaisé.
Son exile se dessine et se peint
aux frontières d'une terre miroitante de ses reflets solaires - quelqu' en soit le lieu… Gradations aux bords que l'on
retrouve chez Barnett Newman dans son oeuvre
"Abysse Euclidien" de 1945. Son exil où le bleu du ciel et de la
mer-mère évoque une spiritualité profonde et haute, à atteindre. Pour cela, un
accolement sans fin.
Ici, l'oeil
est embré et la larme venant du fond du coeur une perle.
Eroba Eroba
Eliany - Le peintre d'un ciel de l'horizon
L’ Europe vue du point de vue d un peintre d origine
du Maroc
Une exposition a Vienne et a Paris
revu de Philip Levy
Art Agains War is a spontaneous event organized by artists concerned about the effects of war. "The artists taking part in this show are Canadians who resent being
represented and implicated in the current military action in Yugoslavia, and in all wars where bombing civilians is being used in the name of making peace,"
says Ottawa artist and curator Dan Monet. "We all felt a compelling need to say something. To do something."
The art represented in this show covers a range of issues associated with many wars taking place around the world: the use of Canadian bombs against a civilian
population and civilian infrastructure in Yugoslavia and Iraq; the plight of the victims of Serbian war crimes; the further subversion of the UN general assembly as
a political body; the immoral use of depleted uranium tipped bullets in Iraq and in Yugoslavia; Canadian support for food and medecine embargoes in Iraq;
and the simle suffering of the innocent who are the true targets of any war.Mr. Monet says "I started with a couple of phone calls, not really knowing if anyone
would want to take part in this show. Then the phone started ringing with calls from across Canada. This theme has obviously touched a raw nerve within
the national arts community."
Note: Allan Harding MacKay is the former Canadian War artist who initiated daily destruction of his own work in response to the Canadian government's
active participation in the bombing of Yugoslavia. His work is in a number of prestigious public art collections across Canada, including the National Gallery
and the Canadian War Museum.'Wii Muk'willlixw (Art Wilson) is an hereditary chief (Wold) the Gitxsan people in Northern British Columbia.
He has chronicled in a combination of ancient and modern images, the struggles of people around the world. His book of illustrations recording injustice and
resistance "Heartbeat of the Earth" was released in 1996. Contact Curator: Don Monet (613) 728-1750 Allan Harding MacKay (416) 596-7949
Traveling Exhibitions - Snapshot
Beaver College, Fine Arts
Gallery
Febrauary 25, 2001 - March 25, 2001
SNAPSHOT
An Exhibition of 1,000 Artists
February 25, 2001 - March 25, 2001
Beaver College, Fine Arts Gallery
Beaver College Participating Artists:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W
E
Alan S Edelman, Mel Edelman, Susan Eder,
Yvonne Eder, Jonathan Edmonds, Grier Edmundson, S. B.
Edwards, Howard Ehrenfeld, Galia
Eibenschutz, James Elaine,
Marc Eliany, Andrew Elliott, Dominic Episcopo, Naomi Epstein, Meret Erni, Roi Escudero,
"Bubi" Jan Estep, Yvonne Estrada.
See also reviews in French elsewhere Correspondence:
67 Chesterton
drive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2E 5T4
15 Moshav Sedot Micah, Doar Na Haela 99810 Israel
eliany2603@hotmail.com
Websites: www.artengine.ca/eliany/
www.virtualpublications.ca
www.civilization.ca/expo/eliany/