The sculptor Michel Basbous (1921-1981) had begun his studies at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in Beirut and went from there to the Beaux Arts in Paris in 1949. During a second stay, in 1954, he joined the studio of the Russian artist and sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1888–1967). Basbous’s drawings (1) were often sketches that would be transformed into glorious sculptures. Figurative as well as abstract, these fill the garden (2) of his house in the village of Rachana, which he turned into an open-air museum and artistic and cultural centre which flourished in the years before the Civil War that engulfed Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. I was fortunate enough to have visited Rachana some years ago and was amazed at the beautiful white sculptures that began to appear on the main road as we neared the village.