Shafic Abboud

Shafic Abboud was born in Mhaidseh in the Metn region of Mount Lebanon and studied at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) before moving to Paris in 1947. Immersing himself in the post-war École de Paris alongside Jean Bazaine and Roger Bissière, he became the first Arab artist to fully integrate European lyrical abstraction with the sensory memory of the Levant.

Abboud's luminous canvases glow with vibrant layers of color, evoking the golden light of Mount Lebanon, village folklore, Byzantine icons, and his grandmother's storytelling. Renowned as a master of color and painterly texture, major retrospectives of his work have been held at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and across Europe.