Human Group

Whatever he is doing, Joseph Matar gives himself heart and soul. His eyes embrace all, but he sees in depths beyond what his his eyes see, perceiving what only the Spirit can perceive!

This is what he is and this is his whole way of being: joyful at being present, overflowing with intense tenderness and vitality, smiling when he greets the rays of sunrise, in other words when embracing existence itself. Beware when you approach him, for his thousand-sided flame sears and burns, awakens and gives pulsating life! His rhythm with the pen is in tune with his breathing that brings into play his heart and his eyes and his soul!

Whether his arm is a cutting point, a lead pencil or ink, he opens before us a new world. Like the door of Ali Baba’s treasure opening in obedience to a spoken word, he tells us on a virgin page the love story of a heart which loves without ever drying up!
With his pencil he expresses the bewitching capricious magic which shows him reaching to the stars or plucking a modest daisy. The line he follows is that of the will and of love. Over the fifty-five years during which he has been revealing himself, he has ever continued to learn, learning to break in, to domesticate, to humanize all that stands in his path. His desire has always been to pass beyond them all the better to affront whatever the future may bring. Alas! how many expressions there are without effect, without a soul able to reveal itself, how many prayers seeking to rise up without any religion, how much religion without prayer!

Yet is not the final purpose beyond pictorial art, prayer and religion to attain what is supremely sacred? It is something sacred to pass on a heritage, without more verbiage. The stars do not hide their faces, they do not hide their light! Being present, they send forth their rays and reveal their beauty, from which men of every condition have profited throughout the ages. This bard of legends and allegories works far removed from words and from pointless chatter. He has his vocabulary, human and universal, with which he speaks to the great ones of the earth and to the little ones, all those who have eyes to see with and hearts to feel with. He always returns to the same story, his own story, the story of existence. This colorful saga must always remain unique, in a state of movement, the saga of changing the world! What a task, what an esthetic experiment! Here you are invited to the great feast, mystical and enchanting. In this movement from which you find yourself unable to separate yourself you will redouble your efforts, for “humanizing God” is no light undertaking. More difficult yet is “divinising man”! Allegories of creators and created, swirling whirlpools of grace, of brilliance and of charm… in an eternal love, an eternal spring of metamorphosis and renewal.

Boutros GERMANI