BASIL ALKAZZI – AN ONGOING ODYSSEY…
“As an artist I choose, like many others before me, as many beings before me, to tread my own path, a destined path, and one that now dazzles the perceptions of the mind’s eye; the images of which are as yet un-categorized. But do they need to be? Labels categorize and by so doing confine, restrict, bind a creative force so full of energy and life: a very unfair outlook by those outside the stream of creativity.”
Basil Alkazzi. 2008
Basil Alkazzi (born in 1938, Kuwait) is a British artist and patron of visual art now living in Monaco. Basil Alkazzi has regularly exhibited in London and in the United States since 1973. The artist is a prolific and compulsive painter and has recently also written and directed several short films.
Basil Alkazzi’s paintings are transfused with a mystic sense of light while he employs a very modern vocabulary of form. The delicate abstractions float highly varied forms in a sea of space. They embrace the transcendent powers of abstraction. The art of Basil Alkazzi is described as spiritual and metaphysical themed painting, it has mainly evolved within the last four decades. In his recent paintings Basil Alkazzi continues the quest to pursue an intensely felt vision. There is a deep meditation on nature, reaching towards the core of celebration let loose in a sensory world of nature’s own sensual and mysterious Life-force.
The exhibition “Basil Alkazzi – An Ongoing Odyssey…” features the artist’s recent paintings alongside his works made in the course of the last twelve years allowing the viewer to see a broader perspective of the artist’s work, the themes the artist is interested in and his artistic continuity. Curtsey of the artist, the exhibited paintings of gouache on handmade paper have been included in the Art Collection of Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre as a most generous donation.
Basil Alkazzi’s paintings can be found in over 35 museum and public collections in the USA, Great Britain, Israel, Kuwait, Poland and Latvia, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (USA) and the Royal College of Art (UK).
Tatjana Černova
