Marwan Kassab-Bachi’s first GCC exhibition includes three rare paintings

Marwan Kassab-Bachi’s work hangs in the British Museum and Tate Modern in London as well as the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Recently, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi acquired one of his paintings and now a staggering retrospective of his works has opened at Sharjah’s Barjeel Art Foundation – his first exhibition in a GCC country.

But his early years as an artist were not without struggle.

Although Kassab-Bachi comes from a wealthy family – he was born in Damascus in 1934 and now lives in Berlin – he worked in a fur factory for eight years between 1962 and 1970. But he never stopped painting.

“I could never stop,” says Kassab-Bachi, now 80 and battling ill health. “Painting is my life, it is like breathing to me. Without it, there is nothing.”

During the factory years, Kassab-Bachi would finish his work, go home and spend most of the night working on sketches that he would transform into larger oil paintings during his weekends. He didn’t socialise, he forgot about the rest of the world and instead immersed himself in his own sphere, painting portraits and trying to channel his inner essence.

Original article by Anna Seaman

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Marwan Kassab-Bachi’s first GCC exhibition includes three rare paintings