In his youth, Madi resided in Rome for 22 years, eventually obtaining Italian citizenship. He returned to live and work in Beirut, Lebanon in 1987, never to leave again. After studying at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (alba), Beirut, Lebanon in 1963, Madi returned to Rome to pursue his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti, the Accademia San Giacomo and a number of the city’s free ateliers. Madi has had more than sixty solo exhibitions all over the world and has been viewed by thousands of people at such venues as the British Museum, the Venice Biennial and Tokyo National Museum. Madi’s works over four decades express an intensely personal fusion of European and Islamic influences, always represented with a force that is both arresting and subtle. His joyful experiments in colour and form have resulted in a unique body of work that relates to modern artists like Matisse and Picasso as well as to the principles of divine harmony that influence the abstract designs of Islamic art. Whether in two or three dimensions, his lines are a sign of spontaneous freedom that belies the careful, even exacting calculations that the artist invests in each work. This combination of meticulousness and sensuality is evident everywhere in Madi’s work, inspired by his profound belief in “God’s” universal order, in which everything is different and yet composed of the same cosmic element.
