“Cinema led me to art, and art led me everywhere else.”
— Yervant Hawarian
Born in Qamishli, Syria, in 1949, Yervant Hawarian is a Lebanese-Syrian painter of Armenian descent, and one of the most prolific image-makers of Lebanon’s contemporary visual culture. Based in Beirut since the early 1960s, his career began at the age of fifteen as a cinema-affiche painter, producing monumental film posters for major theatres across Lebanon. By the early 1970s, he was operating multiple cinemas, including Cinema Royal, where his studio was located, merging the site of production with the site of display. During this time, he had employed a full studio of assistants, working to meet the demand for his commissioned work across Lebanon’s urban film circuit.
Alongside his cinematic works, Hawarian became the unofficial portraitist for Lebanese presidents, receiving commissions from five consecutive heads of state between the 1970s and 1990s, as well as other prominent political figures. His practice extended to large-scale public murals, ecclesiastical commissions, and portraits of major Arab cultural figures. He also produced banners and posters dispersed through the streets of Lebanon, serving a promotional function.
Since the early 2000s, Hawarian has transitioned into a self-reflective fine-art practice, reinterpreting the golden era of Arab cinema through large-format acrylic canvases and sculptural box works that revisit iconic titles, such as Casablanca and Gone with the Wind, during the Hope in an Age of Dystopia exhibition (2024) at the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation. His work was also featured in For the Children of Gaza (2024) at Msheireb Museums, Doha, and Divas: From Oum Koulthoum to Dalida (2025) at Sursock Museum, Beirut. Between 2005 and 2011, Hawarian was also commissioned to paint religious iconographic depictions for six churches across Lebanon.
His work is held at the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut, and has been featured in exhibitions addressing the visual history of Lebanon and popular Arab imagery. Widely regarded as a foundational figure in the history of hand-painted cinema posters in the Middle East, his six-decade career boasts an estimated twenty thousand works, situated in the intersection of cinema, politicians’ and artists’ portraits, religious iconography, and vernacular graphic culture.
