Marwan

Marwan Kassab-Bachi, known as Marwan, was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1934. After studying Arabic literature at Damascus University, he began his practice in art, painting landscapes and portraits in his native country.

In 1957 he traveled to Germany and studied under the mentorship of Hann Trier at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin. From then on, Marwan spent his life in Germany and only went back to Syria for short visits. In 1980 he was appointed professor at the Berlin College of Fine Arts, he taught there until 2002.

In 1994, Marwan became the first Arab member of Germany’s distinguished Akademie der Künste. Between 1999 and 2003, the artist directed the Darat al Funun’s Summer Academy, engaging with art students in a free and creative workshop environment. Students that attended these workshops include Saïd and Ayman Baalbaki, Tagreed Darghouth, Serwan Baram, and many more.

Living in post-war Germany, he was a part of a Neo-Expressionist group of painters, side-by-side with Georg Baselitz.

Being particularly inspired by expressionist artist, Chaïm Soutine, Marwan concentrated on the energy and the existentialist character of the human being. While absorbing all the German Neo-Expressionist styles, he also drew inspiration from artistic renderings of the occidental and oriental world. This situated his style somewhere between both continents, as his paintings simultaneously reflect an Arabic and Western-European style.

Pre-1970’s, the core of Marwan’s work consisted of four themes: faces, figures, natures-mortes, and puppets. At that point, his work consisted of figurative depictions of recognizable models. It was considered very political.

Since the mid-70’s, fascinated with the idea of portraying the human soul, Marwan amplified the importance of faces in his work, essentially becoming the singular subject in his works from then on.

In a series of works in reference to Khaddouj, a domestic helper his family had during his childhood, he transforms all the memories into a visual theme, related to the homeland, sexuality, and sensual feelings.

Marwan recalls an incident when he was 5 years old being bathed by Khaddouj. He received a violent and unexpected slap on his soap-covered face, accused of looking at her body. Since then, she haunted his canvases.

Known as the “face landscapes”, these faces, which he initially modeled after himself, disappear into vast landscapes of brush strokes. Through the application of a multitude of layers on top of one another, and rendering a skin that seems almost mutilated—as if it were inside out—the artist seemingly mastered the portrayal of the human soul.

Marwan constructed his human heads as landscapes because, to him, they represented a universe, hence an expression of the human soul. Through these landscapes, he conveyed complex human emotions, channeling his own emotions in his brush strokes. His style went from figurative to abstraction, while he veered away from political demeanor in his pieces.

Marwan died in 2016 in Berlin. He was 82 years old.

Written by L’Or Iman Puymartin © Dalloul Art Foundation