Mahmoud Hammad

Mahmoud Hammad was a Syrian artist and pioneer of modern Syrian art. He was born in Damascus in 1923 and attended the Italian School of Damascus and the Jawdat al Hashemi secondary school in Tajheez where his professors encouraged him to study art. At the age of sixteen, he traveled to Italy for the first time and discovered the history of art and paintings by renowned foreign artists. He returned to Syria due to the war and participated in his first group exhibition in 1939. He also established the Atelier Veronese and the Syrian Art Association with his friend Nassir Chaura. In 1953, he had his first solo show at the Fine Arts Association and was granted a scholarship from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. He studied painting, mural art, printmaking and medal engraving and received many prizes and recognition. He also traveled to Andalusia with Adham Ismail and married the Lebanese artist Durriya Fakhoury. In 1957, he returned to Syria and became an art professor in Daraa and then in Damascus. He also helped with the establishment of the first Faculty of Fine Art and was appointed its dean in 1967. He founded the Damascus Group, an affiliation of Syrian Abstract artists, with Nassir Chaura and Elias Zayat. He experimented with abstraction, Arabic letterforms, landscapes and mural painting and created a unique style that blended modernism and tradition. He died of a heart attack in Damascus in 1988 and left behind a rich legacy of artistic achievements and influence.