Willy Aractingi was a self-taught artist born in New York in 1930 who resided in France since 1975. He is best known for painting all of Jean de la Fontaine’s fables with oil on canvas, a six-year endeavor culminating in 244 works in 1995. Aractingi’s work is noted for its rich compositions depicting fables, fantasies, landscapes, and folkloric illustrations, with gradations of color and minimalist depictions of creatures and surrealist landscapes. His colors are carefully chosen, producing works that are reduced to a complete harmony of form, line, and shadow. The artist exhibited his work in many places, and in 2017, the Sursock Museum held a retrospective showcasing over 120 works that he completed between 1973 and 2003.
Willy Aractingi
Lebanese, 1930-2003
Contemporary, Naïve Art, and Post-War
