Aref El Rayess

Aref Rayess was a Lebanese artist who played a significant role in Lebanese modern art. He was a self-taught painter, sculptor, and illustrator who collaborated with Nicolas Nammar to establish the Institute of Fine Arts at the Lebanese University in 1963. Rayess traveled extensively and drew inspiration from his journeys to create works that revolved around humanity, identity, and nature. He never associated his work with a specific movement and considered his repertoire to be a vocabulary of images meaningful to himself. His diverse styles included figuration, expressionism, symbolism, and geometrical abstraction.