فير زملر غاليري Sfeir-Semler Gallery

MARWAN

Marwan Kassab-Bachi (b. 1934, Damascus, Syria – d. 2016, Berlin, Germany) known simply as MARWAN began his career after studying Arabic literature at the Damascus University. In 1957, he moved to Berlin where he attended the Hochschule für Bildende Künste. He very quickly integrated a group of German expressionist painters, working alongside artists such as Georg Baselitz and Eugen Schönebeck, and spent the rest of his life in Berlin where he became a professor at the Akademie der Künste. Read more

His early paintings from the 1960s center on the human figure. Sometimes androgynous, the depicted characters are decidedly physical and question the human body as an outer self. They are also at the same time disquietingly amorphous. Their shapes trick perspective and their extremities dissolve into the background, as if the painter tried to capture their souls through the depiction of their bodily shells.In the early 70s, MARWAN’s paintings started to focus solely on the human face, using a horizontal format, and painting the human visage as a landscape, in a blur of topographical features. Over the years, they morphed into what he called “heads”, and he continued to paint these until the end. Abstract brushstrokes in earthly tones at first glance, they reveal themselves as multiple melancholic faces, layered one on top of the other, gazing straight at the viewer from the depth of the canvas.

Producing sketches, watercolor drawings, etchings or paintings, MARWAN developed his Sisyphean painting language through a meditative, spiritual approach by painting over and over the same face, often on the same canvas. In his quasi-obsessive search for the essence of beings, and of spirits, in his quasi-mystical Sufi approach to painting, MARWAN’s work clearly carries his oriental roots. It is at the same time highly characteristic of the German expressive painting movement of 1960s Berlin. His distortion and eventually abstraction of forms led him to create overpowering canvases, showing intensely eloquent figures.

After his death, MARWAN’s work was presented at Sharjah Biennial 14 (2019) and Venice Biennale 57 (2017), among others. His work can be found in the collections of MoMA, New York; Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi; Tate Modern, London; British Museum, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Bibliothèque National de France, Paris; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, Darat al Funun, Amman; Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; Kunsthalle Bremen; National Museum, Damascus; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg and many international private collections.

Selected Press

Gallery Exhibitions

Exhibitions Beyond

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2025

  • MARWAN: A Soul in Exile, Christie's, London, UK

2024

  • Works from 1964 to 2008, Sfeir-Semler Gallery Hamburg, Germany

2018

  • Works on Paper: 1968-2014, Sfeir-Semler Gallery Hamburg, Germany

2016

  • Painting, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, Germany

2015

  • Not Towards Home, But The Horizon, Mosaic Rooms, London, United Kingdom

2014

  • MARWAN: Early Works (1962-1972), Serralves Foundation, Porto, Portugal

  • Topographies of the Soul, Barjeel Art Foundation, Maraya Art Center, Sharjah, UAE

2013

  • MARWAN: Early Works 1962 - 1972, Beirut Exhibition Center, Beirut, Lebanon

2012

  • MARWAN, Galeri Artist, Istanbul, Turkey

2009

  • Seventy Five, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon

  • Painting, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, Germany

  • Open Until the End - Marwan A Retrospective in Eleven Acts, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin, Germany

2008

  • The 99 Attributes, The Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, Germany

2005

  • Damascus - Berlin - Damascus, Damascus, Syria

  • Marwan: Khaddousch or the unknown early work. Watercolors and drawings 1962-1971, Lindenau Museum in Altenburg, Altenburg, Germany

2004

  • Khaled Shoman Foundation, Amman, Jordan

2002

  • Kunsthalle Emden, Emden, Germany

2001

  • Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah, West Bank

  • Richard Haizmann Museum, Niebüll, Germany

2000

  • Brechhaus Weissensee, Berlin, Germany

1998

  • Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, Darat al Funun, Amman, Jordan

1996

  • Al Hanager Hall, Cairo, Egypt

1995

  • Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, Darat al Funun, Amman, Jordan

1993

  • Bibliothèque National de Paris, France

  • Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France

1991

  • Kunststation St. Peter, Cologne, Germany

  • Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany

1987

  • Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Kiel, Germany

1985

  • Gallery Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich, Germany

1984

  • Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany

1983

  • Overbeck-Society, Lübeck, Germany

1981

  • Bellevue Palace, Documenta Archive, Kassel, Germany

1980

  • Museum of Modern Art, Baghdad, Iraq

1976

  • Gruenenbaum Gallery, New York, USA

  • Orangerie Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin, Germany

1972

  • Gallery Lietzow, Berlin, Germany

1970

  • Arab Cultural Center, Damascus, Syria

1967

  • Gallery Springer, Berlin, Germany

Selected Group Exhibitions

2026

  • In Absence and in Presence: Works from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, Aranya Art Center, Qinhuangdao, China

2025

  • GIACOMETTI / MARWAN OBSESSIONS, Institut Giacometti, Paris, France

  • The Shade, Sfeir-Semler Karantina, Beirut, Lebanon

  • Zeitraffer 1985–2005, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, Lebanon

2024

  • There Is No There There, MMK: Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany

2023

  • In the Heart of Another Country: The Diasporic Imagination Rises, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE (forthcoming)

  • Nationalgalerie: A Collection for the 21st Century, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany

2022

  • In The Heart of Another Country, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany

2021

  • Icons, Boghossian Foundation, Villa Empain, Brussels, Belgium

2019

  • Making New Time, Sharjah Biennial 14, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE

2017

  • Viva Arte Viva, 57th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy

2014

  • Here and Elsewhere, New Museum, New York, USA

2013

  • Art in Berlin. 1945 Until Now, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany

2011

  • 760 914 cm² print, Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany

2009

  • 11th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey

Awards

2005

  • Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

2002

  • Fred-Thieler Prize

Public Collections

Education

1980

  • Professor for Painting, Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, Germany

1963

  • Painting, Hochshule der Künste (HdK), Berlin, Germany

1957

  • University of Damascus, Arab Literature, Damascus, Syria