Marwan Kassab-Bachi

Marwan Kassab-Bachi, known simply as Marwan, was born in Damascus and studied Arabic literature before moving to West Berlin in 1957 to study painting at the Hochschule der Künste under Hann Trier, forming a close friendship with Georg Baselitz. In 1980, he was appointed full professor of painting at the Berlin University of the Arts, the first Arab artist to hold that prestigious chair.

Marwan's signature achievement was his decades-long obsessive exploration of the human head (Köpfe). Approaching the face not as conventional portraiture but as a rugged topographical landscape of layered paint, cracked textures, and psychological depth, his canvases hang in the Centre Pompidou, the British Museum, and the Tate Modern.