Alongside his magnificent sculptures made from local stone, bronze or wood, Basbous also drew prodigiously but rarely exhibited his drawings; figurative or abstract, many are preparatory sketches for his sculptures:...
Alongside his magnificent sculptures made from local stone, bronze or wood, Basbous also drew prodigiously but rarely exhibited his drawings; figurative or abstract, many are preparatory sketches for his sculptures: ‘One of these drawings serves often as a base from which commence one or many sculpted works. It is not one single sketch, but dozens that precede modeling.’8 Basbous began his studies with the Lebanese sculptor Youssef Hoyek (1883–1962) and at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in Beirut in 1945, following which, in 1949, he went to the Beaux-Arts in Paris on a government scholarship. During a second stay in Paris, in 1954, he joined the atelier of the Russian artist and sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1888–1967) and on his return was appointed Professor of Sculpture at the American University of Beirut. At Rachana, with its organic experimental constructions inspired by the corbelled architecture of northern Syria, he lived and worked from 1956 with his sculptor brothers Alfred (1924–2006) and Youssef (1929–2001), and his avant-garde poet wife, Thérèse (1934–2020), turning the village into an open-air museum and artistic and cultural centre and hosting international festivals in which theatre, music and poetry were combined with sculpture and painting.