Composition
- Artist: Shafic Abboud
- Date: c.1957–8
- Medium: Oil paint on hardboard
- Dimensions: support: 1460 x 1140 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Composition” by Shafic Abboud. Painted around 1957–58, the canvas is a thick‑painted hardboard that feels almost sculptural. Abboud worked the surface with a palette knife, creating an irregular grid that gives the whole piece a feeling of motion. It’s a hallmark of his 1950s abstract phase, when he was living in Paris yet still recalling the light and colours of his native Lebanon. The shapes hint at an aerial view of a rural landscape, and the artist once wrote, “I like pursuing the work up to the abstract picture without letting go of the real origin.” The layers of blues, greys and lighter tones shift like a soft wind across the surface, inviting you to look again and again to catch the subtle rhythm in the texture. It’s a striking example of how Abboud merged European informel, Arabic influences, and a memory of the Mediterranean sky into a single, dynamic composition.
See it in person
Composition is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
