Abdulqader Al Rais

Abdulqader Al Rais (b. 1951, Dubai, United Arab Emirates) is an Emirati painter based in Dubai. He works in watercolour on paper and in oil and acrylic on canvas. His paintings range from detailed views of coral-stone houses, wind towers and carved doorways to abstract compositions of Arabic letters and floating coloured squares.

Al Rais grew up in Kuwait with his elder sister's family. There he trained at the Free Art Studio, learning from monographs on Dutch, Renaissance and Impressionist painters, and began exhibiting around 1968. Mathaf reads early oils such as The Wait as a response to the displacement that followed the 1967 war. Back in the UAE he worked as a labour inspector and took a degree in Sharia law. In those years he turned to watercolour because it dried quickly. His Impressionism series (1992) set traditional architecture against geometric patterning, and his later work draws on Hurufiyya. Series in Al Nayed at Opera Gallery Dubai (2026) include Alghaf, named after the ghaf tree, Alhaa, Serenity and Yesteryear.

He holds a bachelor's degree in Sharia law from United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain (1982). Retrospectives have been held at Sharjah Art Museum (2012), the Institut du monde arabe, Paris (2018) and Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi (2019). His work was shown in Word into Art at the British Museum, London (2006). It was also in the National Pavilion UAE at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). He won first prize at The UAE in the Eyes of Its Artists in 1999. His work is in the collections of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, the British Museum and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.