Nazem al-Jaafari

Nazem al-Jaafari was a Syrian painter who is considered the founder of impressionism in Syria. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo from 1944 to 1947, and then returned to Syria to work as an art instructor and later as a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus. He dedicated much of his life and work to the city of Damascus, documenting its architecture, culture, and history through realistic and impressionistic paintings. He rarely sold his work, hoping to preserve it in a museum for future generations. He was awarded a prize by the Ministry of Education in 1951, but felt slighted by the artistic community and became a recluse. He exhibited his work in South America and Europe, and was celebrated with a retrospective at the National Museum in Damascus in 2006. He is reported to have completed between 3,500 and 7,000 works, most of which are still part of his collection or in private hands. He died in 2015 at the age of 97.