Modern Arab art from the Dalloul Collection: ‘We have amazing artists living through these tumultuous times. They deserve to be seen by an international audience’

When Dr Basel Dalloul inherited his parents’ art collection in 2011, he was confronted with a monumental task. ‘I was born and raised in the US and while I knew quite a bit about Western art, I knew virtually nothing about Arab art. It was a daunting prospect,’ says the tech entrepreneur and founder of IT consultants, Noor Group.

Formed over the course of 55 years by Dr Ramzi Dalloul and his wife Saeda El Husseini Dalloul, the Dalloul Collection is one of the most significant assemblages of Arab modern and contemporary art in the world today, with approximately 3,000 works.

After the successful first auction, Marhala: Highlights from the Dalloul Collection, which took place on 9 November 2023, Christie’s is honoured to continue its partnership with Dr Basel Dalloul. On 31 October 2024, 48 paintings, works on paper, photographs and sculptures will be offered in Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art Including Highlights from the Dalloul Collection at Christie’s in London. An online sale featuring highlights from the collection will run until 4 November.

The Dalloul Collection works in the sales are led by the Syrian painter Marwan’s Portrait of a Man (1973) and the monumental 2012 photograph Artificial Light from Saudi artist Ahmed Mater’s Desert of Pharan series. Also featured are works by pioneering female abstract artist Samia Halaby, the Lebanese painters Paul Guiragossian and Yvette Achkar, and the Iraqi painter and sculptor Dia Azzawi. Also represented are Mohamed Melehi, Farid Belkahia and Mohammed Chabâa, key figures in the Casablanca Art School of post-independence Moroccan modernism.

On taking responsibility for the collection, Dalloul’s first priority was to produce an exhaustive database. ‘I was aware of how little knowledge was out there,’ he explains. ‘We needed to educate people about Arab art, and we also needed to do research and establish the authenticity of some of the works.’

Today there is a website documenting all the art in the collection, which serves as a comprehensive research tool for curators and art historians. ‘We get messages from people all the time, thanking us for making our collection available,’ Dalloul says.

He believes his background in electrical engineering and business was invaluable in approaching the task, and ensuring that the information provided is accurate.

‘There is very little documentation about these artists, often because archives have been destroyed in places of conflict. What there is can vary widely, and it can be incredibly inconsistent. Some artists lack legal estates, and quite often we found people had just made things up.’

By way of example, he describes a portrait of Sayyed Darwish, considered the father of contemporary Arab music, painted by the Cairene artist Hussein Bicar in 1962. ‘Three professors at the Egyptian Academy of Art said it was not by Bicar — in fact they suggested it was painted by two artists.’

At the time, Noor Group was also helping to digitalise the archive of Egyptian state radio and television. ‘We discovered an interview made in the early 1960s with Bicar standing in front of the painting, playing the oud, and discussing his love for the musical instrument,’ says Dalloul.

Other sources of verification are the artists’ families. ‘It takes time and requires a little patience,’ Dalloul continues. ‘People can be cautious. They need to know we are serious.’

It was Dalloul’s mother, a trained art historian, who began the collection. ‘My parents travelled a lot around the Middle East and North Africa for my father’s work. While he was in meetings, she would seek out the art community, visit studios and meet artists. It is the reason the collection is so diverse.’

Since Dalloul inherited, the collection has continued to grow under his visionary leadership and curatorial direction. He has embraced contemporary influences and perspectives, acquiring works by, among others, the Saudi artist Sultan Bin Fahad, the Iraqi painter Mohammed Sami and Shaikha Al Mazrou from the UAE. ‘We have some amazing artists living through these tumultuous political times and making incredible work,’ he says. ‘They deserve to be seen by an international audience.’

This has led him to change his collecting strategy a little. ‘My father was quite old-school, quite systematic in acquiring lots of paintings by each artist,’ he explains. ‘I am more interested in acquiring one or two iconic pieces that represent an artist’s career. I believe the rest should be in public museums.’

To that end, in 2020 Dalloul opened a private museum of Arab art in Beirut, which houses his collection and organises touring shows, both regionally and internationally. Currently, a large group of works from the collection is prominently displayed at the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Dalloul chose Beirut not just because he is Lebanese, but for its rich history as a centre of innovative art. ‘Until the civil war [1975-1990], Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East,’ he says. ‘Lebanon was one of the only countries in the region that didn’t have censorship, so artists congregated there from across the continent in order to paint or write what they wanted.’

Arab artists and intellectuals would meet in the famous Horseshoe café on Hamra Street, Beirut’s Champs-Elysées, to discuss art and politics and potential collaborations. ‘Many of the artists worked in the theatre — there was a real crossover of disciplines,’ says Dalloul.

During the 1960s it became a focus for open-air performances and radical cultural resistance. These histories are explored in the collection, together with art that documents the conflicts that have shattered the region.

Sometimes Dalloul is asked to pick his top 10 artworks from his collection. He says this would be impossible. ‘Top 10? I can’t even pick my top 100.’