(Youhanna Sader)

Born in 1932 - Passed away May 2014

Studies at the Lebanese Academy: 1953 - 1958

Exhibitions:

In Beyrouth (UNESCO) : 1956 (collective)

In Belgium: 1966, 1969

In Windsor - Canada: 1979

In Cyprus: 1995 (collective)

Jean Sader is a priest and a painter. He enters his studio as one might enter a church; when he takes up his brush to paint, he has the impression of going to prayer.

His works are remarkable for the unique transparency they radiate; the longer the eye remains the more mysteries it discovers. Colours blend with the artist's sweat, with the pleasure he feels in creating anew and in discovering; they are one of the most important elements in every picture. The colours are sometimes peaceful, sometimes in revolt but always with this in common: they have no other significance, in the end, than to reveal the soul of the painter and the power he has of transcending any traditional concept of art.

In his drawings, Jean Sader reveals himself in the diversity of his reactions. He does not wish to lay claim to being an innovator, but this he is by nature. Is not the authentic artist he who, in the intoxication of his senses and form the depths of his psyche, finds himself invested with art under its various aspects that he must then try to translate into form by means of many and varied techniques?

What his work wishes first of all to express are those states of mutation, that painful astonishment which accompanies any veritable artists. With Jean Sader, these are not ephemeral crises but attain the very depths of the man, his very substance even. The problem that Jean Sader must affront in the field of art is that inner violence which the explosion of thought provokes in his tormented nature before the artist translates it into images of which he discovers the sense by different techniques of expression.

Every canvas of this painter-priest poses a question, raises a problem, endeavours to be a reflection upon an event, and opens up some reality to discovery. It is thus that the authentic character of his art appears: the combination of a rigorously mastered craft and a great talent.

Youssef Saqr