Aref El Rayess

Aref El Rayess was a Lebanese painter and sculptor, born in Aley in 1928, where he died in 2005. His work spans painting, sculpture, drawing, collage and tapestry. He began painting at eleven and held his first exhibition at the American University of Beirut in 1948.

From 1948 to 1957 he moved between Senegal and Paris, working in the studios of Fernand Léger and André Lhote and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Back in Lebanon in 1957 he set up an Aubusson tapestry atelier with Roger Caron, then spent four years in Florence and Rome on a scholarship. In 1963 the Lebanese government commissioned two sculptures from him for the New York World's Fair. Returning in 1967, he co-founded the Fine Arts Department of the Lebanese University and Dar el Fan with Janine Rubeiz. He published the manifesto With Whom and Against Whom in 1972, and in 1975, in Algeria, made the civil war drawings published as The Road to Peace. He later made about thirteen sculptures in Saudi Arabia and returned to Aley in 1992.

Solo exhibitions followed at Sharjah Art Foundation (2022) and IVAM, Valencia (2023), and his work was in the 60th Venice Biennale (2024). It is held by the Sursock Museum, Mathaf, the Centre Pompidou and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.