Omar Onsi - Lebanon (beryte.com)

The first time I saw Omar Onsi was in the Emergency Room at Berbir Hospital, 30 years ago. A 66 year old man, slight build, ashen face, dry skin, sunken eyes and cheeks, hugely distended, on the verge of shock. He has suffered an acute large intestinal occlusion. Little did I know, then, who Omar Onsi was; all I knew, the man needed urgent surgery. After the necessary preparations, I operated on him to relieve his obstruction.

"Medical and Art met in a critical moment that proved beneficial for both"

Onsi was of great charm. keen sensibility, and prodigious intelligence. He had something devout and kindly, an air "near holiness". He committed himself entirely to his work; art was his "raison d'etre", his life, his paintings a substitute for the children he never had. He would not depart with his children easily.

The Onsis lived in almost complete isolation, seldom went out: a vernissage, an occasional theater, a visit to a very intimate friend, and on the 14th of July.

Onsi lived from his work, "having no other patrimony than his brushes". He worked alone and had no pupils; sometimes he, even, fashioned his own frames. His wife was at the same time, housewife, manager, and "vendeuse". Once, on a buying spree, I asked Mrs. Onsi to show me some water-colors; while slowly unfolding those beauties, she suddenly stopped before the "Rocks at Meyrouba" and announced: "Il est la"; he is there, alluding of course to her husband's artistic ammunitions; I smiled approvingly, and she made a sale.

"We became friends. He confined in me."

Omar Onsi was born with a certain artistic talent. After primary and secondary schooling, his father, a man of vision, saw that his son, be taught English privately for six months, and entered to the Syrian Protestant College. Omar dabbled all along with painting, until a fellow student, Joseph Fghali, brought him to the attention of Khalil Saleeby, who instructed him , for one year long, in the formal elements of drawing and oil.

In 1922, Onsi quit the AUB; he was determined to become a painter.

In 1927, aware of his artistic attainment, he trailed to that of mecca of the art student - Academie Julia - in Paris, where he studied the "hollows and bosses" of the female human form. This led to a magnificent series of nudes, well built full and rounded, the way the French liked them at the time. He visited the Louvre where he sought to draw out, from the old Masters, "le suc de la plante", "that quintessential quality which is all great art".

Onsi returned home in 1930: return to the roots, return to earth, source of all esthetic laws, return to the motherland, with a French wife and dreams. His mood suddenly released, bounded forward. Lebanon the scared soil of vigorous sap and delicate growth, that bountiful earth, awakened Onsi's instinctive poetic imagination, and he, with inventiveness, translated into line and color its immemorial values. He traveled to neighboring Syria and brought back the Druses series, and evocation of a mood, the artist had left, after the loss of his first love. For the rest of his life Onsi will passionately working hard, in the ravishing act of painting.

When I knew Omar Onsi, he had been painting for more than 45 years. Though sympathetic with oil, pastel, "ancre de chine", he had the taste and passion for that light, feathery, plastic expression, the water-color.

The last I saw of my friend, a thinned out, slightly hunchbacked, aging gentleman of solemn grace, with resplendent inner grandeur. The eyes now deep, the luster gone, looked far and beyond this ephemeral world. I never told him what he had; he never asked; he certainly never knew, he had a short time to live.

"Medicine and Art, meanwhile continue their affinity: Medicine treating the body, Art rendering the spirit visible".

"The frailty of human flesh", the strength of human spirit, which refuses to be diminished.