Marwan Kassab-Bachi

Marwan Kassab-Bachi, commonly known as Marwan, was a Syrian painter who lived and worked in Berlin, Germany. He was born in Damascus in 1934 to a wealthy family and studied Arabic literature at the University of Damascus from 1955 to 1957. He then moved to Berlin, where he enrolled in the Hochschule der Bildende Künste and studied under Hann Trier. He became a German citizen in 1968 and was appointed full professor at the Hochschule in 1980. He was a member of the New Figuration movement and was known for his expressive portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. He also explored themes of identity, memory, and exile in his works, drawing inspiration from his Syrian heritage, Sufi mysticism, and poetry. He was influenced by artists such as Francis Bacon, Max Beckmann, and Pablo Picasso. He exhibited widely in Europe and the Middle East and received several awards and honors, including the Fred Thieler Prize for Painting in 1994 and the Order of Merit of Berlin in 2005. He died in Berlin in 2016 at the age of 82. His work can be found in public collections such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern and British Museum in London, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others. He is regarded as one of the most prominent modernist artists of Syria and the Arab world.