Nevine Mattar

Nevine Mattar is a Lebanese-American artist, born in Lebanon in 1955. She works across painting, papier-mâché, collage, murals and book and poster illustration, and has designed sets for theatre. She studied Sumi-e ink painting in Japan and painting and illustration in Beirut, London, Los Angeles and New York, and also studied psychology, education and art history.

Much of her work builds three-dimensional space through collage and mixed media, with cityscapes a recurring subject. Her exhibitions are built around researched themes, among them opera, jazz, tapestry, amulets and talismans, and the value of rubbish and recycling. All That Jazz with Scraps (2017), at 392Rmeil393, Beirut, drew on the Harlem Renaissance; A Fauvist View of Beirut (2021), at Galerie Cheriff Tabet, looked at the city's architectural contrasts in oil and mixed media.

Her first solo exhibition, La Femme Fleur, was held in 1982. In 2021 the Prince Osmani Mediterranean Center named her best female visual artist. She founded a papier-mâché association in Lebanon. She has taught cultural studies at the American University of Beirut since 1982, and also at the University of Balamand, Haigazian University and the Lebanese American University. She has exhibited with the Artists of Beirut collective since 2020.