France's Centre Pompidou restores three paintings damaged by Beirut Blast

Variety
02-03-2023 | 05:24
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France's Centre Pompidou restores three paintings damaged by Beirut Blast
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France's Centre Pompidou restores three paintings damaged by Beirut Blast

Three gravely damaged iconic paintings from the Sursock Museum have been restored by teams of Centre Pompidou, one of the biggest collections of modern and contemporary art in Europe, located in Paris.

On August 4, 2020, a massive explosion ravaged Beirut. Located about eight hundred meters from the blast's site, the Sursock Museum was seriously damaged.  

Built in 1912, the Ottoman-style palace hosts a vast collection of modern art. According to Centre Pompidou, forty works, out of one hundred and thirty-three exhibited, suffered damage to varying degrees.   

The Center Pompidou then took charge of restoring three seriously damaged paintings.   

According to Véronique Sorano-Stedman, head of the restoration service, the three pieces chosen by the director of the Sursock museum showed alterations of different kinds, affecting both the canvas supports and the pictorial layers.   

The visual impact of the damage was different for each one. The portrait of art collector Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock by Kees Van Dongen had an intricate tear at the top, which was visually disturbing due to its length and location.
 
In contrast, the Portrait of Odile Mazloum by Cici Tomazeo Sursock showed multiple perforations and a loss of adhesion between the support and pictorial layer. The work Consolation by Paul Guiragosian had lost a large part of its material as it was blown away by the explosion.   

Concerning this last painting, the director wanted a testimony of the violence of the explosion to remain.  

"This is why we looked for a solution that would not hide the gaps but reduce the visual discomfort to maintain a balance between the aesthetic integrity of the painting and its material history," stated Sorano-Stedman.  

Now visible on level 5 of the Museum, the paintings will return to the walls of Lebanon's famous Museum in May 2023.
 

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