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The First Identity | The Blue Phase

The blue phase for Toufic Abdul-Al is the cognitive visual expression of the "memory of the place," marking Acre's sea, beach, the house and the alley as its secret. It is the lost homeland, which the artist tried to complete exploring and building his relationship with using the mountains and springs of Barja, Tripoli's port and the various places in Lebanon to be a substitute of home while in exile. The great similarity between the nature in Palestine and Lebanon helped him with this. His works at this stage contains visual elements, which repeat themselves in different scenarios and colour structures. It appears as a visual process celebrating the scenes of fishing stored in memory about Acre.
In “Palestinian Ballads" (1966), blue dominates the work which hangs between the surrealism of the dream, the expressiveness of colours and emotion. It is also closer to a chromatic composition, which creates its own system and relationships between the visual elements it contains. In the centre of the painting, you can see the fisherman's net present in the middle of the blue colour, appearing as a bright area of white, punctuated by transparent strokes of yellow, brown and sky blue. The fish and the boat turn into two decorative units on both sides of the painting. In the upper section, the blue space makes a chromatic configuration with a transparent moon striking through. “Palestinian Ballads” is the visual equivalent of Acre, which became a distant dream while in exile.