The Jewels of my Career: Works by Marwan

“Painting is my life, it is like breathing to me,” stated Syrian-born artist Marwan Kassab-Bachi (1934–2016), known simply as Marwan, in an interview when asked about his creative practice that remained uninterrupted, even as he worked at a tannery for eight years between 1962 and 1970. Marwan moved to Berlin from Damascus in 1957 in order to study at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, and remained in Germany for nearly six decades, becoming the first Arab member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 1994.

Best known for his depictions of the human head or ‘face landscapes’, Marwan’s work explores the human condition through a deep investigation of emotions, intense psychological states, and inner passions. Featuring mask-like faces, imposing human figures and contorted bodies, his paintings draw on a range of human emotions, offering a window into the inner world of subjective human experience.

Featured in this exhibition are Marwan’s masterpieces from the 1960s and the 1970s, of which very few remain in existence. Reflecting on his work from this critical period, Marwan asserted that the Barjeel Art Foundation’s collection holds “the jewels of my career” (Marwan, 2014).

The exhibition is organized by the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah in collaboration with Lempertz, Berlin.

* 1934 Damascus, Syria.
+ 2016 Berlin, Germany.

An internationally recognised figure, Marwan Kassab Bachi, also referred to simply as Marwan, is known for the rawness of the subjective experiences expressed in his work. Marwan’s painting and printmaking explore the human condition through psychological explorations of the standing figure and the face or head often as self-portraiture. He studied Arabic Literature at Damascus University and attended the Hochschule für Bildende Künste after moving to Berlin in the late 1950s where he felt very much an outsider in postwar Europe. In the 1970s, Marwan embarked on some of the most fruitful investigations of his career. He began to repetitively explore the human head as a landscape upon which to excavate and express the complexities of the soul. Marwan’s work has been featured internationally at venues including London’s Tate Modern and the British Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Serralves Museum in Portugal, which in 2014 featured a major retrospective of his work curated by Catherine David.

Barjeel Art Foundation is an independent, UAE-based initiative established to manage, preserve and exhibit an extensive collection of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art. The foundation’s guiding principle is to contribute to the intellectual development of the art scene in the Arab region by building a prominent, publicly accessible art collection in the UAE. Part of this objective involves developing a public platform to foster critical dialogue around contemporary art practices with a focus on artists with Arab heritage internationally. The foundation strives to create an open-ended enquiry that responds to and conveys the nuances inherent to Arab histories beyond borders of culture and geography. By hosting in-house exhibitions, lending artwork to international forums, producing print and online publications, and fashioning interactive public programmes, the foundation strives to serve as an informative resource for contemporary art by Arab artists both locally and on the global stage. In addition to building an informative database of artists, the foundation is seeking to develop an educational programme that both understands and involves the local community. By establishing partnerships with arts and cultural institutions internationally, the foundation looks to create opportunities to encourage public awareness of the importance of art to the community.

In 2018, Barjeel signed a contract with the Sharjah Museums Authority to open a long-term exhibition at the Sharjah Art Museum, which features a selection of key modernist paintings, sculptures and mixed media artworks from the Barjeel Art Foundation collection.

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© Photos of artworks and texts: Barjeel Art Foundation