Georges Cyr

Georges Cyr, born in Montgeron, France in 1881, began his artistic career in 1910, and exhibited at the Salon des Independents in 1924, thanks to the urging of French impressionist painter Armand Guillaumin. In 1934, Cyr left France and toured the Middle East, and eventually settled in Beirut, where he became a part of the city’s burgeoning art scene. His oil paintings show the influence of the Rouen School, a group of post- and neo-Impressionist artists who practiced in the city of Rouen. Although he painted a lot of Lebanese landscapes, Cyr made his living in Beirut by selling watercolors, and his studio became a popular meeting place for artists and writers. Cyr’s paintings became freer and livelier as he got older, characterized by looser, more powerful brushstrokes and bolder use of light. In the 1940s, he abandoned watercolor in favor of oil paint and returned to cubism, which he had previously flirted with in the 1930s. Cyr passed away in Beirut in 1964, just a year after his final exhibition.