Artist Suleiman Mansour

Artist Suleiman Mansour, born in Birzeit in 1947

He is one of the most distinguished Palestinian artists working today, throughout his artistic career, more than fifty years ago, he established himself as an internationally recognized artist. He devotes his art to the visual expression of the Palestinian identity.

He studied fine arts at Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. Since the seventies, he has contributed to the creation of graphic symbols of the Palestinian struggle through his paintings. His painting (The Orange Tree) is a symbol of the Nakba of 1948. (The olive tree) represents the 1967 war. Palestinian embroidery inscriptions in his paintings represent daily life in villages. And the personality of the Palestinian woman as the Palestinian mother who gives birth to and protects the Palestinian people.

One of Mansour’s most famous works is the painting (Camel of Heavy Burdens), which was produced in (1973). Mansour renewed through this painting the concept of steadfastness and the continuity of the hard struggle despite the suffering. In the year 2015, the third edition of it (which was produced in 2005) was sold during the Christie’s International House of Modern and Contemporary Art auction in Dubai for more than a quarter of a million dollars. Where, for the first time in the history of international auctions, a corner was allocated for Palestinian art. It is worth noting that before its spread on the global level, this painting was welcomed locally, as it was printed in the form of posters in (1975) and hung in homes and public places throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And the first copy of it was lost in an office on Salah El-Din Street in Jerusalem in (1975). In the same year, the second copy was produced and sold to the Libyan ambassador to the United Kingdom, who in turn gave it to the late Libyan President (Muammar Gaddafi), and that copy was destroyed in (1986) during the war on Libya.

Suleiman Mansour has contributed extensively to the development of a fine arts infrastructure in the West Bank. He also headed the Palestinian Artists Association from 1986-1990. In 1994, he co-founded the Al-Wasiti Center for the Arts in East Jerusalem and took over its management during the years 1995 and 1996. He also contributed to the establishment of the International Academy of Arts in Palestine, which was established in 2004 in Ramallah, and he is a member of its board of directors. He studied art in many cultural institutions and universities throughout the West Bank, including Al-Quds University.

Mansour has exhibited his work in group and solo exhibitions in several parts of the Arab world, the United States, Europe, and Asia. Particularly, he participated in the exhibition (Palestinian Spring) in France in 1997, which was held at the Arab World Institute in Paris. In 1998, he won the Nile Grand Prize during the Cairo Biennale, in recognition of his work (I am Ismail). In the same year, he won the Palestine Prize for Visual Arts. And in 2020, he won the UNESCO Prize for Arab Culture in Sharjah, as he considered this award to be a global recognition of the creativity of the Palestinian artistic movement.

Collections  selected

• The British Museum, London, UK
• Mathaf: Museum of Fine Arts, Doha, Qatar 
• Guggenheim Museum, Abu Dhabi, UAE
• Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
• The Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation, Abu Dhabi, UAE
• Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France
• Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon
• Dar El-Nimer for Art & Culture, Beirut, Lebanon
• Bank of Palestine Collection, Ramallah, Occupied Palestine
• Birzeit University Museum, Birzeit, Occupied Palestine
• The Palestinian Museum, Birzeit, Occupied Palestine
• The Khalid Shoman Collection: Darat Al Funun, Amman, Jordan
• Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, Jordan