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Fethi Meghelli offers his unique artistic perspective on the contemporary world in his new exhibition of works on paper titled “Shadows and Other Realities,” featured through February 2 at The Good News Café and Gallery.
The selections in Meghelli’s current exhibition reflect the creativity of an intellectually restless and multi-dimensional artist comfortable working in a variety of different media including oil, acrylics, printmaking, pencil, charcoal, pastel, and collage. While the present exhibition features his works on paper, he also uses other surfaces for his pieces including canvas, fabric, and plywood.
“In the past few years, I have been focusing on producing large monotypes,” the artist explains. “This printmaking technique allows me to be more spontaneous, and my images are freer.”
Meghelli’s themes are as diverse as his media, ranging from scenes of immigrants, musicians, brides, and large crowds to quiet vignettes of flowering trees, mountains with clouds, and ships at sea. “Political and social contradictions, tragedies and hopes, dreams and realities, emotions, intuitions, and perceptions all are elements that inspire, shape, and guide my artistic work,” he says.
“To express these realities, I have chosen the visual representation of the human figure,” he adds. “My imagery draws upon childhood memories, music, movies, past and current news stories, folk tales, and art history. I use all these elements as models to interrogate, to reconstitute, to change, build, and develop.”
Meghelli pursued art studies in his native Algeria and in France, earning a master’s degree in fine arts in 1974 from the Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. He completed advanced studies in printmaking with Robert Blackburn in New York City and at Southern Connecticut State University. He now resides in New Haven.
His art works have been exhibited in solo shows staged at various galleries and academic sites in Connecticut, as well as in Washington, DC, and St. Germain-en-Laye, France. Selections have also been featured in group exhibitions over more than three decades in France, Germany, Austria, Algeria, Japan, and several East European countries, as well as at numerous East coast locations from New York to Boston. His sensitive and expressive works have become part of many private, corporate, institutional, and gallery collections worldwide.
Among the works currently on exhibition at the Good News Cafe is Meghelli's "Le Cheval Rouge," a 1997 monotype (see accompanying image).
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