An Interview with Maher Al Baroudi

The Syrian artist Maher Al Baroudi, born in 1955, is a painter and sculptor whose personal and professional journey was disrupted by the dictatorship and suppression of the Assad dynasty, forcing him to seek freedom in France. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and Paris, and later taught at the Émile Cohl High School of Art in Lyon between 1996 and 2022. His works depicting “sheep” stand as the pinnacle of his artistic vision and his biting critique of society and authoritarian politicians. Family memories and the harsh realities of life carved a deep groove into his soul, which manifests in his expressive intensity, austere use of color, and spontaneous approach to painting.

Maher, how did your artistic journey first begin? And how did the family environment and your childhood in Damascus shape your artistic path and visual memory?

I was born in the Mazraa neighborhood after my father had left the family home. One of the stories that left a lasting mark on me and my siblings was his account of witnessing his own father’s killing by the French during their withdrawal from Damascus. My grandfather had been one of the merchants who financed the Revolution of 1925, and after his death, my father took on the responsibility of supporting the family.

My childhood memories are not happy ones. My older siblings and I spent three years in a boarding school - Dar Arabiya in Bab Touma - starting from second grade, where Islamic education was heavily emphasized. Fear centered around being late for prayers or failing to memorize Quranic suras; punishment often meant beatings. Those were harsh years, spent away from the warmth of our mother.

My grandmother, who lost her mind after a suicide attempt - throwing herself from the second-floor window - had a love for drawing. I used to visit her after school, watch her sketch, and bring her paper and her favorite dark blue colored pencil. She would sit and draw half-faces from memory, capturing them with astonishing realism and without ever using an eraser.

There is no doubt that such violent scenes and upheavals left a deep imprint on how I engaged with life, sharpening my artistic sensitivity. Yet my memories of the city itself, and specifically of its traditional houses, are rich and vivid, saturated with enchanting images collected during visits to relatives who lived in the old quarters. My mind holds a reservoir of orange trees, jasmine and orange blossoms, fountains ringed with plants, arches, intricate wooden carvings, and colorful stones. I also loved the lively chatter at doorways and windows. Perhaps the walls in my sculptures today are drawn from that deep visual memory of the city.

I also have memories of holidays spent in the village of Buqqayn, where my grandmother lived for some time. Her house had a balcony overlooking the plains of Zabadani, a view I sketched again and again with pencils and watercolors. During that period, as my parents broke apart, I stopped attending school regularly. Instead, I spent my days drawing my brother and crafting small plaster portraits, quickly shaping their features before painting them once they dried.

In the 1970-1971 school year, I trained at the Adham Ismail Center, where I practiced copying portraits in clay. I also spent time at the nearby workshop of the sculptor Nashaat Raadoun, absorbing everything I could. That year, I began traveling with my brother to Beirut and Amman for medical treatment. These hardships unfolded against the backdrop of ruthless political oppression in the country. They drove me deeper into drawing and sculpture - as if, through my work, I were releasing a mad monkey from within, but in a way that was patient and deliberate, almost rational.

You studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus and graduated in 1979. Your graduation project had the theme of “the oppressed human being.” What led you to choose that subject at the time? And which professors at the Faculty who had a lasting influence on you and your work?

I had originally planned to emigrate and join my brother in France. But after failing to obtain a visa, I headed instead to Rome for the 1975-1976 academic year, leaving the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus after successfully completing my second year, where I had been specializing in printmaking. In Rome, I made a living by washing cars and later selling cinema tickets. Eventually, I stopped working when I met a Syrian art dealer who provided me with paints and canvases, giving me the chance to earn a modest income by painting imagined landscapes.

Studying at the academy in Rome, however, turned out to be a disappointment. I struggled to adapt, but I made the most of my time by visiting museums and immersing myself in the masterpieces of sculpture. Eventually, I decided to return to Damascus and requested to switch my specialization to sculpture - a decision shaped by what I had seen and felt in Rome. I rejoined the Faculty of Fine Arts in the 1976-1977 academic year, three months late, and also took a ceramics course at the Walid Izzat Center.

At the same time, global tragedies such as the Ethiopian famine and the Tel al-Zaatar massacre left other deep scars. Inside Syria, systematic terror was everywhere. I vividly remember the constant fear of military punishment and the arrests of fellow students during university military training. Each time I escaped, I felt incredibly lucky. As Shakespeare wrote, “Every one can master a grief but he that has it.”

For me, the Faculty of Fine Arts was never just an academic institution - it was a refuge, a space where I could truly breathe. In the final three months leading up to graduation, I shared a studio at the college with Mustafa Ali. The night guard allowed us to stay overnight in exchange for food. I still remember my classmates from those days: Ahmad Shmeis, Razan Dabbas, Huda al-Farra, Imad Ladqani, Rasima Akhwan, Haitham al-Attar, Sana Younes, Waleed al-Agha, and Bassam Sheikh al-Sagha.

You graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon in 1982, and later in Paris in 1983. What led you to pursue further studies in France?

My decision to study in France was driven by a deep desire to experience a more civilized world. During my high school years, after my parents’ separation, I traveled with my mother to Italy, France, and Germany to help her with her clothing trade business. Those trips opened my eyes to the richness of European culture and the vast difference from the world I knew. I was also driven by a personal need to escape - from a fractured family life, and from the grim reality of Syria under the Assad regime. It was a life without conscience, justice, peace, and any real future.

After your return, it is mentioned in one article that you struggled to adapt to the conditions of teaching at the university. What were those conditions that drove you away from academia?

I began studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon as a fourth-year student in 1979. By the end of that year, the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education had approved an earlier request of mine for appointment as a teaching assistant. I returned to Syria full of hope. However, from the moment I arrived at the airport, I was met with humiliation: I was struck with the butt of a rifle and detained overnight in an arms depot. Someone offered to help me in exchange for two liters of whiskey and allowed me to inform my mother, who arrived with a relative holding the rank of general. Even then, all they could discover was that I was being held over a delay in submitting the certified document needed to postpone my mandatory military service. In that moment, I bitterly regretted my decision to come back.

In 1980, I began teaching sculpture to first-year students and painting to third-year students. But I quickly grew disillusioned due to the rampant corruption in student admissions, where favoritism and bribery were commonplace. There were also serious methodological flaws: some teaching assistants would interfere with students’ work despite lacking artistic talent themselves - something I saw as a violation of the educational process.

Later, I was assigned to continue my studies in Russia, but I refused, requesting instead to return to France where my academic studies had already begun. The university president at the time, Mustafa Haddad, rejected my request. I submitted a resignation letter, but it too was rejected. In the end, I decided to flee the country. I was sentenced in absentia to six years in prison for the crime of abandoning my post and was barred from returning to Syria for fifteen years.

Tell us about your teaching experience in France, and your relationship with the French critic Jean-Jacques Laurent, a major cultural figure in Lyon who was particularly interested in your work.

There is a significant difference between public and private education in France. In the public sector, professors typically work about two days a week, and students have the freedom to attend classes at their discretion - the essential requirement being the completion of assigned projects for evaluation. Basic materials are also provided. It is worth noting that over the past twenty years, some departments, such as printmaking and stone sculpture, have been eliminated.

Private education, by contrast, follows a more structured academic curriculum. I taught sculpture to first- and second-year students at the Émile Cohl School of Art in Lyon from 1996 until 2022. The program there spans five years after secondary school, with mandatory full-time attendance. Students are organized into well-structured groups, and I was responsible for two of them.

My relationship with Jean-Jacques Laurent (1922-2011) began when a former professor of mine at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, instead of writing a preface for one of my exhibitions, introduced me to him. I met Laurent regularly at a café in central Lyon, a place frequented by many writers and artists. Our conversations often revolved around art and Middle Eastern affairs, about which he was well-informed - perhaps because his daughter’s husband was Lebanese.

Tell us about your first solo exhibition, and which exhibition you consider a pivotal moment in your career.

Deprived of stability in my homeland due to persecution, my first solo exhibition was held at the Charles Péguy Contemporary Art Gallery in Lyon’s second district in 1995. The exhibition featured around thirty works - sculptures, paintings, and drawings - representing nearly fifteen years of solitude, exile, and continuous work away from the clamor of the media.

At that time, I portrayed the condition of the oppressed, the poor, and the displaced, along with psychological disorders such as megalomania and the duplicity of rulers whose personalities were both crumbling and counterfeit. The exhibition opened doors to a wider network within the cultural sphere.

That same year, I managed to exhibit in Damascus at the late Abdel Razzaq Touma’s gallery in the Salhiyyeh neighborhood. He took responsibility for transporting the artworks. I was able to return to Syria under a decree issued by the criminal Hafez al-Assad, which allowed expatriates to visit the homeland with prior approval - provided they paid a fee of 500 French francs.

Artists such as Fateh Moudarres (1922-1999), Nazir Nabaa (1938-2016), and the historian Afif Bahnassi (1928-2017) attended the exhibition, among others, and some recorded their impressions in the exhibition’s daily logbook, which I have kept.

The media coverage was remarkable, highlighting the works’ condemnation and mockery of authority - as if people were yearning for an outlet amid the repression. On opening day, three high-ranking officers, their chests covered with medals, entered the gallery. One of them asked me to explain my intention behind depicting such grotesque figures. I replied that it was a critique of militarism and Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. The officer nodded, laughed, and left.

In Haywanat al-Insan (Animalization of Man), the Syrian writer Mamdouh Adwan explores the aggressive, brutal side of human nature, even tracing herd behavior back to a violent, savage instinct. When did sheep first appear in your work, and do your seemingly docile sheep conceal violence? What significance do elements such as the microphone and mirror carry alongside them, and how do you view the frequent absence of color in many of your pieces?

I was constantly searching for a way to break free from the cycle of painting the sick, the homeless, and the madmen of power and tyranny. That opportunity came with the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a moment that deeply affected me. I replaced the human figure with sheep. I wanted to express how the West viewed the populations of the Third World: as little more than animals. Entire villages and cities were wiped out with targeted, calculated strikes. I conveyed this through two charcoal works on paper, with sheep as the central figures.

Afterward, I developed a series of studies and works featuring pigs, parrots, donkeys, and dogs, often shown alongside microphones - a symbol of the professions of the world’s rulers: hypocrisy and lies.

I drew inspiration from how animals appear in popular tales, much like the French writer Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695): “I used animals as symbols to instruct humans”. In general, I believe animals are more merciful than humans. Yet violence lies dormant even within the most peaceful of souls when they or their loved ones face danger. Sheep too, though gentle in appearance, are fierce when defending themselves or their companions. Yet how can they resist when they are shackled?

To me, the sheep is a symbol of submission, blind obedience, and unthinking conformity. When I created sheep portraits, I endowed them with human postures, sometimes fusing them with human elements. At times, I made them rebellious. In other words, these sheep embody the voice of the oppressed.

I used mirrors in some works as a reference to exposing what lies hidden. The mirror acts as a trap for some, a provocation for others. It invites the viewer to see themselves - their condition, their vanishing face - whether humiliated, submissive, arrogant, broken, oppressive, oppressed, butcher, or butchered. The mirror forges a unity between the observer and the observed - as it does in, for instance, Magic (2005) or Wonderful Speech (2002).

As for the presence or absence of color in my work, it is primarily linked to time and the speed of execution. I typically begin with an idea I have recorded or a quick croquis, which gradually develops into a full study using charcoal. This remarkable medium offers a wide range of possibilities for capturing emotions and imaginings. Through it, I register the initial wave of feeling - the foundation upon which I later build sculptures and acrylic paintings.

Naturally, a greater number of my works remain in charcoal, owing to the material’s speed and ease of execution, as well as its flexibility in amplifying or softening the dramatic tone. Each medium - whether charcoal, color, or sculpture - carries its own expressive excitement and impulsive character.

Some of the charcoal pieces were later revisited in color, though only after many years. For instance, The Smart Strike was originally created in charcoal in 2002 and reproduced in acrylic in 2021; similarly, The Shadow was first rendered in charcoal in 2009 and reimagined in acrylic in 2021.