Biography
"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
Marwan Sahmarani is a Lebanese painter and multidisciplinary artist whose work confronts themes of violence, power, and myth. Born in Beirut in 1970, he grew up during the Lebanese Civil War, which lasted from 1975 to 1990. The conflict marked his childhood and shaped his imagination. War, instability, and the fragility of life became central concerns in his practice, giving him the conviction that painting could address history and the human condition directly.
As a child, Sahmarani turned to drawing and storytelling to process the world around him. Art became a way of making sense of chaos, a habit that later grew into his vocation. After leaving Lebanon, he pursued formal training in France at the École Supérieure d’Art et de Design de Saint-Étienne. There, he received academic instruction in painting and absorbed the legacies of European modernism. Dividing his life between Lebanon and Europe gave him two vantage points, which were the lived reality of conflict at home and the lessons of Western painting traditions. He learned to weave these influences together, producing a practice that speaks across cultures.
During the 1990s, Sahmarani painted in a figurative and realist style, honing his technical skills. By the early 2000s, he began to loosen his approach. He described his style at that time as “dirty,” marked by heavy brushwork, thick color, and deliberate distortion. His canvases often combined figuration and abstraction, using urgent gestures and chromatic excess to convey intensity.
A turning point came with The Dictators, 2006, a series of grotesque portraits of authoritarian leaders. The works satirized political power, presenting violence as both theatrical and deeply human. He continued this direction with The Eternal Return of the Same, 2007, which examined authoritarianism as a recurring cycle rather than a single historical event. These works established him as a politically engaged painter willing to confront authority and myth head-on.
In the decade that followed, Sahmarani deepened this inquiry. His series Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, 2009, and The Dictators B, 2011, combined folklore with political critique, turning crowds, mobs, and leaders into stage-like scenes of collapse. These paintings revealed his interest in the grotesque, using excess and exaggeration to reflect instability and corruption.
By the mid-2010s, Sahmarani returned to Beirut after years abroad, including a significant period in Spain. His years in Spain allowed him to distance himself from Lebanon and opened new directions in his work. Moving between Beirut and Spain gave his practice a transnational dimension. He painted with a perspective that was shaped by Lebanon’s violent history but also informed by European traditions, allowing him to situate themes of brutality, fragility, and resilience within a global frame.
Recent works address Lebanon’s continuing crises, from economic collapse to the 2020 port explosion. In Dirty Mirror Selfie, 2024, distorted bodies and garish colors reflect the narcissism and instability of contemporary life. The piece captures a society caught between spectacle and collapse, mirroring the contradictions of modern Lebanon.
These concerns culminate in The Silence That Remains, 2024, a monumental painting that stands among Sahmarani’s most ambitious works. The canvas is divided into two parts. On the right, a heap of bodies evokes mass graves, confronting viewers with the horror of collective death. On the left, indistinct and violent forms suggest chaos without resolution. The work reflects on genocide and systemic brutality, but it does not tie itself to a single event. Instead, it stages silence itself as the subject. The silence of history, of death, and of power.
For Sahmarani, silence is not emptiness but presence. It is the weight of what cannot be said, the pause after violence, and the space where memory lingers. In this painting, silence holds together both clarity and ambiguity. The viewer cannot escape the brutal pile of bodies, yet the surrounding space resists fixed interpretation. The canvas leaves the audience unsettled, caught between recognition and uncertainty.
This approach shows a larger trait in his art. He avoids giving one fixed meaning. Instead, his paintings remain open, allowing many interpretations and leaving viewers in uncertain territory. Sahmarani does not tell direct stories but places people in uneasy positions, caught between attraction and repulsion, clarity and doubt. He believes this is where painting has the most power by pushing viewers to confront the instability of their feelings and the instability of the world around them.
Over his career, Sahmarani has returned to themes of religion, sexuality, and myth, refracted through violence and the body. His paintings often juxtapose brutality with vivid color, turning horrific material into images that are at once disturbing and captivating. His method is physical and intuitive. He approaches the canvas without fixed plans, allowing gesture, accident, and color to guide the process. This openness mirrors his belief that art should destabilize rather than explain.
Today, Sahmarani lives and works between Beirut and Spain. His practice reflects a lifetime of negotiating histories of violence, displacement, and endurance. From The Dictators to The Silence That Remains, his works transform trauma into fields of color and gesture. Rooted in Lebanon’s fractured history but engaged with global modernism, his art insists on ambiguity, silence, and destabilization. In doing so, it embodies his conviction that painting can reveal both the brutality of conflict and the uneasy beauty found within it.
Works
The Silence That Remains , 2024