30/09/2026
We have another exceptional painter for you to discover when you visit us over the next two weeks! 🎨
Nizar Sabour was born in 1958 in the coastal city of Latakia, Syria, and graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus in 1981. He later completed his PhD at the Stroganov Academy in Moscow. In his paintings, he often incorporates natural materials.
“My childhood memories are closely connected to the land, which is why I use natural materials such as ash, sand, and remnants of olive pits. I returned to these materials to paint the olive-covered mountains I used to climb and whose scent remains in my memory,” he writes.
Olives are important in his work not only as a material, but also as a unifying symbol in a country that was ravaged by war. “Olives bring together all of Syria’s religious, sectarian, and ethnic communities because they are found on everyone’s table,” he says in one of his interviews.
There is also one town that Sabour returns to again and again, painting it in different forms, colors, and shades: Maaloula, one of the few places in Syria where Aramaic—often referred to as “the language of Christ”—is still spoken.
Since the 1970s, Sabour’s work has been exhibited internationally, from Damascus, Beirut, and Amman to Paris, Moscow, and New York. His paintings have been shown at institutions including the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, and can be found in several museum and institutional collections.
📍 You can see some of Nizar Sabour’s paintings of Maaloula at Mokotowska 59.
