MEET OUR ARTISTS
SABHAN ADAM
Painting, Prints
Born in Hassaka, Sabhan Adam (1973) is a self-taught artist who creates works in relative isolation from the art world. A prolific artist, he has built up his career in both traditional and independent ways through exhibiting with galleries but also independently marketing and self-funding work and publications.
Challenging notions of beauty and ugliness, Sabhan Adam paints portraits of misshapen creatures often clothed in glamourous attire against plain backgrounds. While distorted and monstrous, the figures hold a complex set of emotions based on Adam’s own psychology. He states: "The figures I paint have so many things in common with me – they look like me, they have the same head and the same Asian eyes as me. I draw myself with everything that exists inside ¬– the sadness, the misery, the shocking things I have faced, the isolation, and the feeling of not belonging to this world.”
WAHID MAGHARBE
Painting, Prints
Jimmy Prowling leads the typically unconventional life of an artist. Working with a wide array of media, and constantly pushing boundaries, this artist is known for breadth and richness in style. Get in touch with Azmina Art Galleries if you’d like to find out about their available pieces.
HAZEM AKIL
Painting, Prints
The featured artist of one of last year’s larger exhibitions, Timothy Smith constantly wows the art world with fresh perspectives and an incredibly polished technique. There aren’t many artists who can do what Timothy Smith does.
MOHAMMAD KABBAWA
Painting, Prints
Mohammad Kabbawa is a Syrian/Turkish plastic artist who was distinguished in a precise manner in his plastic features that deal with contemporary conceptualism classic. He is an artist with multiple talents in drawing, forming and sculpture, especially in the art of miniature painting.
Kabbawa was influenced by his Levantine environment and his city "Aleppo" in which he was born in 1959 and acquired an early artistic talent through his studies at the Applied Arts Center and persuaded his higher education in art at the Academy of Arts in Petersburg despite his scientific orientation and his acceptance in the Medical College, devoting his life to fine arts. He presented academic studies in Arab and Islamic arts, including the art of ceramics, and presented works specializing in Arab and Islamic miniature works that were admired and amazed by the recipients and critics.
Kabbawa is famous for blending Islamic legacy, modern expressionism and impressionism with the contemporary concept, offering the details of his environment Halabiya and Shamiya and their intensity of color and heritage.
He has held numerous exhibitions in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Eastern Europe. His sculptural work "Abd al-Malik Ibn Marawan" was installed in front of the Bank of Russia.
SHARIF MOUHARRAM
Painting, Prints
Born in Arab Azza - Jarablus - Idlib, Syria – 1954; Sharif Mouharram grew up in a very simple rural environment. Since his departure in 1981 from the atelier of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, the artist Muharram worked on more than one style and artistic direction, and Chess architecture remained the basic element in his painting. He presented it at times related to the human being (women in particular) and at other times without him, and his plastic movement was accompanied by a media movement through which he launched various interpretations, readings and interpretations, exciting and ambiguous, about the art that he produced and many other issues, most of which related to his rural childhood, full of surprise and discovery of the simple and deep aesthetics of nature. At the same time, they formed the reservoir of his visual memory, from which he inspired most of the elements and themes of his paintings.
He set up 25 individual exhibitions in Beirut, Cairo, Alexandria and Aleppo. The last solo exhibition 2008 (Dar Kalimat - Aleppo).
His works have been acquired in France, England, Germany and India.
He passed away on January 6, 2009, in his hometown Aleppo.
ALI AL KAFRI
Painting, Prints
The featured artist of one of last year’s larger exhibitions, Timothy Smith constantly wows the art world with fresh perspectives and an incredibly polished technique. There aren’t many artists who can do what Timothy Smith does.
ALI MOKAWAS
Painting, Prints
A new artist in our roster, this visionary has produced some of our favorite contemporary pieces. Inspired by the mundane, their work could hardly be described as such.
SAAD YAGAN
Painting, Prints
Jimmy Prowling leads the typically unconventional life of an artist. Working with a wide array of media, and constantly pushing boundaries, this artist is known for breadth and richness in style. Get in touch with Azmina Art Galleries if you’d like to find out about their available pieces.
ZOUHAIR HASSIB
Painting, Prints
The featured artist of one of last year’s larger exhibitions, Timothy Smith constantly wows the art world with fresh perspectives and an incredibly polished technique. There aren’t many artists who can do what Timothy Smith does.
FOUAD DAHDOUD
Painting, Prints
A new artist in our roster, this visionary has produced some of our favorite contemporary pieces. Inspired by the mundane, their work could hardly be described as such.
NASHAAT MOUDARRES
Painting, Prints
Jimmy Prowling leads the typically unconventional life of an artist. Working with a wide array of media, and constantly pushing boundaries, this artist is known for breadth and richness in style. Get in touch with Azmina Art Galleries if you’d like to find out about their available pieces.
MEET OUR ARTISTS
SABHAN ADAM
Born in Hassaka, Sabhan Adam (1973) is a self-taught artist who creates works in relative isolation from the art world. A prolific artist, he has built up his career in both traditional and independent ways through exhibiting with galleries but also independently marketing and self-funding work and publications.
Challenging notions of beauty and ugliness, Sabhan Adam paints portraits of misshapen creatures often clothed in glamourous attire against plain backgrounds. While distorted and monstrous, the figures hold a complex set of emotions based on Adam’s own psychology. He states: "The figures I paint have so many things in common with me – they look like me, they have the same head and the same Asian eyes as me.
BARSOUM BARSOUMA
Born in 1947, Barsoum Barsouma is a Syrian artist born in Al-Hasakah, Syria. 1947 from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus - painting department.
“From the civilization of Mesopotamia”, came the artist Barsoum Barsouma carrying in his conscience an aesthetic humanity, worthy of his homeland culture. While he stands by the human in their calamity; he depicts graphic tragedies saturated with passion. In his works, we observe theatrical features, and man's relationship to the land and architectural symbols. Enriching his art with modern decorative creations adjoin the ancient decorative features, his work carries an enormous blend of emotions to the viewer.
Born in 1942, Wahid Magharbe is a Syrian / Moroccan artist who grew up and lived his life in Aleppo Syria. He carried the sciences of the East to the West, mixing their pigments producing pure and pleasant colors, and his ideas converged with the currents in which he grew up and later integrated into the Rome Academy of Fine Arts, which was the center of all kinds of artistic development.
Wahid, one of six honored in the celebration of the Days of Syrian Plastic Art 2018, studied plastic art in a special study, in order to obtain a license in 1978 in photography from the Academy of Rome, forming an artistic experience in which he
HAZEM AKIL
Working
MOHAMMAD KABBAWA
Mohammad Kabbawa is a Syrian/Turkish plastic artist who was distinguished in a precise manner in his plastic features that deal with contemporary conceptualism classic. He is an artist with multiple talents in drawing, forming and sculpture, especially in the art of miniature painting.
Kabbawa was influenced by his Levantine environment and his city "Aleppo" in which he was born in 1959 and acquired an early artistic talent through his studies at the Applied Arts Center and persuaded his higher education in art at the Academy of Arts in Petersburg despite his scientific orientation and his acceptance in the Medical College, devoting his life to fine arts. He presented academic studies in Arab and Islamic arts, including the art of ceramics, and
SHARIF MOUHARRAM
Born in Arab Azza - Jarablus - Idlib, Syria – 1954; Sharif Mouharram grew up in a very simple rural environment. Since his departure in 1981 from the atelier of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, the artist Muharram worked on more than one style and artistic direction, and Chess architecture remained the basic element in his painting. He presented it at times related to the human being (women in particular) and at other times without him, and his plastic movement was accompanied by a media movement through which he launched various interpretations, readings and interpretations, exciting and ambiguous, about the art that he produced and many
ALI AL KAFRI
Al-Kafri is a Palestinian artist who has lived his life in Damascus Syria before studying at the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts in Cairo. The first painting he painted was during his high school education, a student at Jawdat Al-Hashemi High School, where he presented a painting in favor of the Palestinian revolution after its rise in 1965 and participated in it with a group of artists in favor of the resistance. That was the beginning of the artistic career of an artist who drew the resistance painting for many years.
The works of the artist Ali Al-Kafri are distinguished by presenting the different colors of heritage, especially the Palestinian heritage.
ALI MOKAWAS
Born in Latakia, Ali Mukawas (1955) graduated from the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University in 1978. He became a well-respected professor of the visual arts, teaching in Algeria, the UAE, Oman and Syria.
Mukawas is characterized by his full aware work upon depth & breadth of the relationship between art, thoughts, memory and conscience. Reappearing continuously throughout his work is the central image of the tree. Alluding to its allegorical nature, he describes it as “an unusual but an epic legend that has to do with the rural man: his rituals, the collective imagination, the cosmic void and the existentialism of the artist...”
SAAD YAGAN
Born in Aleppo, Syria in 1950, Saad Yagan is a leading contemporary Syrian painter. He is regarded as a key member in the development of contemporary Syrian Art and is one of the most significant modern-expressionist painters in the Middle-East.
Yagan began painting at the age of thirteen. He studied painting at the Plastic Arts Center of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Aleppo and graduated in 1964. He held his first solo exhibition at the city’s National Museum five years later.
Yagan is widely known for chronicling the modern day experiences of Aleppo residents and their instinctive
ZOUHAIR HASSIB
Born in Hasaka, Syria 1960 of Kurdish origins; Zouhair Hasib would break down barriers as a Kurd. Kurdish people were not allowed to achieve higher education, historically. However, unwavering and determined, he graduated with an art diploma and was at the top tier of his class from the University of Damascus. But this would be only the beginning.
He would later exhibit not only in his hometown of Hasaka but in Europe, Damascus, Dubai and throughout other parts of the Middle East. His works would be featured in governmental buildings, businesses and residences.
FOUAD DAHDOUD
Syrian artist Fouad Dahdouh was born 1960 in Damascus, Syria.
Considered as one of the most important sculptor of the Middle East, sculpture was his domain during his studies and later in his teaching activities. Painting, which he later chose as his profession, became his sphere of activity. He is an outstanding painter whose name is associated with joyful color festivals. His paintings were exhibited at the Venice Biennale. He also became famous for his graffiti art and 3D design for the backdrops of television series and films. Especially the old Damascene local color, whose examples we experience in the current scene.
NASHAAT MOUDARRES
Nashaat Moudarres is a Syrian artist born in 1952 in Aleppo, Syria.
His holdings:
It is owned by the Damascus National Museum
Awards and honors:
He was honored by the Armenian Renaissance Cultural Association in Aleppo with an honorary membership, and his works are distributed all over the world.
Solo exhibitions:
He has several solo exhibitions, including:
- Al-Khanji Hall, Aleppo, 1998.
- Armenian Renaissance Cultural Association
HIJAR ISSA
Plastic artist, born in "Qamishli" in 1970. Graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1992. He constantly re-create his rural environment in his work, as the subject appears as a permanent extension of himself in most of his art work.
Hijar Issa has held more than one solo exhibition and has participated in many group exhibitions, both inside and outside Syria. During his stay in Germany, he held five exhibitions making his name known in Europe. Nowadays, most of his art is owned by the Ministry of Culture and private collections. He has also worked as an interior designer in more than forty Syrian films and series.
KHALIL AKARY
Born in Damascus on May 28 1945, Khalil Akary studied painting at the Higher Institute of Arts and Theater in "Yerevan - Armenia" and obtained a master's degree. He also obtained a diploma in restoration of works of art and icon from the All-Soviet Central Institute for Restoration Research and Sciences "Moscow 1984".
Akary participated in all exhibitions of "the Ministry of Culture and the Syndicate of Fine Arts", and held twenty-one solo exhibitions inside and outside "Syria". He received many prizes, including the first prize for graduates of the centers of "Plastic Arts in Syria" 1964, the prize of the jury in the "Lattakia Biennial" 1995, the honorary prize in the "Biennial
SABRI RAFAEL
Born in the province of Hasaka in 1961, he studied free photography as a member of the Syrian Plastic Artists Union and a member of the Union of Dutch Photographers (2004) - (2005).
Rafael: "Many have painted nature, the silent nature, trees, mountains, flowers and clouds, but I did not paint nature just because it is colorful and beautiful, but I prepared from the stocks of my visual memory a symphony of colors to install and compose between its small parts paintings of art envisaging harmony among them."
The paintings of the artist, Sabri Raphael, are distinguished by the search for light when he paints the subjects of nature.
YOUSSEF BAKAR
The plastic artist Youssef Bakr, born in Afrin / Syria in 1964. He studied at the Arts Center of Aleppo from 1984-1989 before moving to Germany in 1997. His paintings are in public and private collections in Germany, Syria, the Netherlands, Lebanon, Belgium, Switzerland and the USA.
Solo exhibitions:
- 2018 Gallery 4 you, Mönschengladbach
- 2017 Viersen
- 2016 Soul Landscapes- California Art Gallery, zülpich
- 2015 SCHIMMER-Kunsthaus Langenfeld
-2014 Nature, People, Imagination Gallery Hof 3, Kalkar
MEET OUR ARTISTS
SABHAN ADAM
Born in Hassaka, Sabhan Adam (1973) is a self-taught artist who creates works in relative isolation from the art world. A prolific artist, he has built up his career in both traditional and independent ways through exhibiting with galleries but also independently marketing and self-funding work and publications.
Challenging notions of beauty and ugliness, Sabhan Adam paints portraits of misshapen creatures often clothed in glamourous attire against plain backgrounds. While distorted and monstrous, the figures hold a complex set of emotions based on Adam’s own psychology. He states: "The figures I paint have so many things in common with me – they look like me, they have the same head and the same Asian eyes as me.
BARSOUM BARSOUMA
Born in 1947, Barsoum Barsouma is a Syrian artist born in Al-Hasakah, Syria. 1947 from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus - painting department.
“From the civilization of Mesopotamia”, came the artist Barsoum Barsouma carrying in his conscience an aesthetic humanity, worthy of his homeland culture. While he stands by the human in their calamity; he depicts graphic tragedies saturated with passion. In his works, we observe theatrical features, and man's relationship to the land and architectural symbols. Enriching his art with modern decorative creations adjoin the ancient decorative features, his work carries an enormous blend of emotions to the viewer.
Born in 1942, Wahid Magharbe is a Syrian / Moroccan artist who grew up and lived his life in Aleppo Syria. He carried the sciences of the East to the West, mixing their pigments producing pure and pleasant colors, and his ideas converged with the currents in which he grew up and later integrated into the Rome Academy of Fine Arts, which was the center of all kinds of artistic development.
Wahid, one of six honored in the celebration of the Days of Syrian Plastic Art 2018, studied plastic art in a special study, in order to obtain a license in 1978 in photography from the Academy of Rome, forming an artistic experience in which he
HAZEM AKIL
Hazem Akil is a Syrian artist born in Aleppo, Syria. From an early age he demonstrated an innate artistic talent and continued to bring his creative passion to fruition. He held his first solo exhibition in 1984. He moved to Lebanon in 2012, where he currently resides.
Akil is known for his abounding in symbols, which sometimes suggests an accumulation that confuses the regularity of the painting, thus confusing its internal movement contributing to his unique style.
We might find in the paintings of Hazem Akil an objective link, or a common denominator, but he works in a variety of ways on his paintings, sometimes even diverging. The common denominator in Akil’s work is its use of the eastern
MOHAMMAD KABBAWA
Mohammad Kabbawa is a Syrian/Turkish plastic artist who was distinguished in a precise manner in his plastic features that deal with contemporary conceptualism classic. He is an artist with multiple talents in drawing, forming and sculpture, especially in the art of miniature painting.
Kabbawa was influenced by his Levantine environment and his city "Aleppo" in which he was born in 1959 and acquired an early artistic talent through his studies at the Applied Arts Center and persuaded his higher education in art at the Academy of Arts in Petersburg despite his scientific orientation and his acceptance in the Medical College, devoting his life to fine arts. He presented academic studies in Arab and Islamic arts, including the art of ceramics, and
SHARIF MOUHARRAM
Born in Arab Azza - Jarablus - Idlib, Syria – 1954; Sharif Mouharram grew up in a very simple rural environment. Since his departure in 1981 from the atelier of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, the artist Muharram worked on more than one style and artistic direction, and Chess architecture remained the basic element in his painting. He presented it at times related to the human being (women in particular) and at other times without him, and his plastic movement was accompanied by a media movement through which he launched various interpretations, readings and interpretations, exciting and ambiguous, about the art that he produced and many
ALI AL KAFRI
Al-Kafri is a Palestinian artist who has lived his life in Damascus Syria before studying at the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts in Cairo. The first painting he painted was during his high school education, a student at Jawdat Al-Hashemi High School, where he presented a painting in favor of the Palestinian revolution after its rise in 1965 and participated in it with a group of artists in favor of the resistance. That was the beginning of the artistic career of an artist who drew the resistance painting for many years.
The works of the artist Ali Al-Kafri are distinguished by presenting the different colors of heritage, especially the Palestinian heritage.
ALI MOKAWAS
Born in Latakia, Ali Mukawas (1955) graduated from the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University in 1978. He became a well-respected professor of the visual arts, teaching in Algeria, the UAE, Oman and Syria.
Mukawas is characterized by his full aware work upon depth & breadth of the relationship between art, thoughts, memory and conscience. Reappearing continuously throughout his work is the central image of the tree. Alluding to its allegorical nature, he describes it as “an unusual but an epic legend that has to do with the rural man: his rituals, the collective imagination, the cosmic void and the existentialism of the artist...”
SAAD YAGAN
Born in Aleppo, Syria in 1950, Saad Yagan is a leading contemporary Syrian painter. He is regarded as a key member in the development of contemporary Syrian Art and is one of the most significant modern-expressionist painters in the Middle-East.
Yagan began painting at the age of thirteen. He studied painting at the Plastic Arts Center of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Aleppo and graduated in 1964. He held his first solo exhibition at the city’s National Museum five years later.
Yagan is widely known for chronicling the modern day experiences of Aleppo residents and their instinctive
ZOUHAIR HASSIB
Born in Hasaka, Syria 1960 of Kurdish origins; Zouhair Hasib would break down barriers as a Kurd. Kurdish people were not allowed to achieve higher education, historically. However, unwavering and determined, he graduated with an art diploma and was at the top tier of his class from the University of Damascus. But this would be only the beginning.
He would later exhibit not only in his hometown of Hasaka but in Europe, Damascus, Dubai and throughout other parts of the Middle East. His works would be featured in governmental buildings, businesses and residences.
FOUAD DAHDOUD
Syrian artist Fouad Dahdouh was born 1960 in Damascus, Syria.
Considered as one of the most important sculptor of the Middle East, sculpture was his domain during his studies and later in his teaching activities. Painting, which he later chose as his profession, became his sphere of activity. He is an outstanding painter whose name is associated with joyful color festivals. His paintings were exhibited at the Venice Biennale. He also became famous for his graffiti art and 3D design for the backdrops of television series and films. Especially the old Damascene local color, whose examples we experience in the current scene.
NASHAAT MOUDARRES
Nashaat Moudarres is a Syrian artist born in 1952 in Aleppo, Syria.
His holdings:
It is owned by the Damascus National Museum
Awards and honors:
He was honored by the Armenian Renaissance Cultural Association in Aleppo with an honorary membership, and his works are distributed all over the world.
Solo exhibitions:
He has several solo exhibitions, including:
- Al-Khanji Hall, Aleppo, 1998.
- Armenian Renaissance Cultural Association
HIJAR ISSA
Plastic artist, born in "Qamishli" in 1970. Graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1992. He constantly re-create his rural environment in his work, as the subject appears as a permanent extension of himself in most of his art work.
Hijar Issa has held more than one solo exhibition and has participated in many group exhibitions, both inside and outside Syria. During his stay in Germany, he held five exhibitions making his name known in Europe. Nowadays, most of his art is owned by the Ministry of Culture and private collections. He has also worked as an interior designer in more than forty Syrian films and series.
KHALIL AKARY
Born in Damascus on May 28 1945, Khalil Akary studied painting at the Higher Institute of Arts and Theater in "Yerevan - Armenia" and obtained a master's degree. He also obtained a diploma in restoration of works of art and icon from the All-Soviet Central Institute for Restoration Research and Sciences "Moscow 1984".
Akary participated in all exhibitions of "the Ministry of Culture and the Syndicate of Fine Arts", and held twenty-one solo exhibitions inside and outside "Syria". He received many prizes, including the first prize for graduates of the centers of "Plastic Arts in Syria" 1964, the prize of the jury in the "Lattakia Biennial" 1995, the honorary prize in the "Biennial
SABRI RAFAEL
Born in the province of Hasaka in 1961, he studied free photography as a member of the Syrian Plastic Artists Union and a member of the Union of Dutch Photographers (2004) - (2005).
Rafael: "Many have painted nature, the silent nature, trees, mountains, flowers and clouds, but I did not paint nature just because it is colorful and beautiful, but I prepared from the stocks of my visual memory a symphony of colors to install and compose between its small parts paintings of art envisaging harmony among them."
The paintings of the artist, Sabri Raphael, are distinguished by the search for light when he paints the subjects of nature.
YOUSSEF BAKAR
The plastic artist Youssef Bakr, born in Afrin / Syria in 1964. He studied at the Arts Center of Aleppo from 1984-1989 before moving to Germany in 1997. His paintings are in public and private collections in Germany, Syria, the Netherlands, Lebanon, Belgium, Switzerland and the USA.
Solo exhibitions:
- 2018 Gallery 4 you, Mönschengladbach
- 2017 Viersen
- 2016 Soul Landscapes- California Art Gallery, zülpich
- 2015 SCHIMMER-Kunsthaus Langenfeld
-2014 Nature, People, Imagination Gallery Hof 3, Kalkar