"I think my work doesn’t only talk to the intellect. It goes deeper in the subconscious and the emotion of the viewer" — Marwan Sahmarani
Born in Beirut in 1970, Marwan Sahmarani is a Lebanese visual artist whose core practice is painting, supplemented by drawing, sculpting, ceramics, and occasional mixed-media. He studied at the École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques, Atelier Met de Penninghen, Paris, where he graduated in 1994.
Sahmarani works between Beirut and Tàrbena, Spain, creating textured paintings characterized by impasto brushwork, thick layering, vibrant color, and expressive gesture. He addresses themes of violence, identity, memory, and political conflict, often bridging figurative and abstract modes. In his landscapes, looser strokes dissolve into atmospheric fields of color, while his more overt works deploy dynamic movement and surface complexity to evoke a psychological tension between the individual and collective experience.
In 2010, Sahmarani was one of three recipients of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, with his work The Feast of the Damned unveiled at Art Dubai and later presented at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. His international exhibition record includes Told/Untold/Retold at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2010); the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Greece (2011); and the 3rd Çanakkale Biennial, Turkey (2012).
He has also presented solo exhibitions at Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai (2011); Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, Zurich (2011), London (2014), and Dubai (2015); and Leila Heller Gallery, Dubai (2024-25). His work has featured in All About Beirut at Kunsthalle whiteBOX, Munich (2010), and Convergence: New Art from Lebanon at the American University Museum, Washington D.C. (2010).
Sahmarani’s works are held in several significant public and institutional collections, including the British Museum (London), the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha), and the Dubai Collection (Dubai).
