Nabil Nahas

Artist biography:

Born: 1949, Lebanon

Nahas is Lebanon's most renowned artist, having established himself before the current heightened interest in contemporary art of the Middle East, as a master of colour, texture and atmosphere. Although thoroughly schooled in Western abstract painting, Nahas takes his inspiration from a diverse range of influences, most significantly nature, and occasionally Islamic art, in particular its abstract geometric and chromatic qualities.

Of his many series, those for which he is best known are his thickly encrusted starfish and fractal paintings, built up by layer upon layer of acrylic paint mixed with pumice and finished in vivid colours, and his landscapes, which are expressive portraits of cedars, olive trees and palms, which reconnect him to the places of his childhood, Lebanon and Egypt.

Nabil Nahas has exhibited regularly at important New York galleries, including Robert Miller, Holly Solomon and Sperone Westwater, and also at Galerie Tanit in Hamburg and Agial Gallery in Beirut. His museum shows include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Katzen Centre, and the American University Art Museum.

His works can be found in numerous international museum collections as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, the Flint Institute of Art, Michigan, the Michigan Museum of Art UMMA and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.

Nabil Nahas lives and works in New York and Lebanon.