Khaled Hourani:
Artist born in Hebron in 1965.
He is an artist, trustee and art critic. He is one of the prominent in the Palestinian art scene as a painter and writer.
Artnet News magazine ranked the painting of Palestinian artist Khaled Al-Hourani “Picasso in Palestine” among the hundred works around the world that defined the features of contemporary art during the last decade, this work was one of only 3 Arab works to earn this classification. Khaled completed this work in 2011 after two years of preparation as he transferred an original painting by Pablo Picasso drawn in 1943 from Holland to Palestine.
One of his most important artworks is (The Watermelon Flag), which he created in 2007. The work was published in the Self Atlas of Palestine as part of an idea for the new flag of Palestine. Following this he drew the watermelon flag when the Palestinian flag was banned after the 1967 war, watermelon slices became a symbol of resistance. In the seventies the Palestinian flag was forbidden and a charge punishable by the law of occupation. And when the officer said it is forbidden to draw the colors of the flag, even if he draws a watermelon. From here, Hourani borrowed the idea of the work, not to admire his sick imagination, but to commemorate this prevention. Many local and international newspapers published articles on (watermelon flag), the most important being the American newspaper (Washington Post).
It is noteworthy that Khaled Hourani’s works were shown in Palestine and abroad. Where he participated in many workshops and artistic conferences. In 2013, he won the Creativity Award for Art and Social Change from the Creative Time Foundation in New York.
Hourani worked for several years as general manager in the Palestinian Ministry of Culture. Also between 1998-2009, he was responsible for the graphic design of the cultural magazine (Al-Karmel), which was directed and edited by the late Palestinian poet (Mahmoud Darwish).
It is worth noting that the artist Khaled Hourani is the author of the novel (In search of Jamal al Mahamel), in which he presented his first experience in the world of novels in 2019. Al-Hourani”s book tells the story of the research that he and others conducted about the fate of a painting drawn by artist Suleiman Mansour, which is the painting of Jamal Al-Mahamil. The painting that disappeared and its fate became a mystery, hence it became the most famous paintings by the great artist Suleiman Mansour.
Selected Collections
