Raffi Tokatlian

Raffi Tokatlian was born in Beirut in 1957 into an Armenian family; his grandfather and father both painted. He makes figurative bronze sculptures, which he casts and patinates himself by the lost-wax method, and he also paints, draws and writes. Every sculpture begins as a sketch. He lives in Faqra, in the Lebanese mountains.

Tokatlian calls his style Surreal-Mythoclassical, drawing on fifteenth-century painters, the Surrealists and Greek and Roman myth. His figures merge, break apart and share space with animals, and his family's history as descendants of survivors of the Armenian genocide runs through the work. His bronze series Myth & Reality includes works such as Prayer, Liberation of the Spirit and Secret behind the Mask.

He studied in Beirut and moved to Paris in 1981. In 2008 he opened his own gallery, Knowledge of Arts, in Saifi Village, Beirut. In 2022 he showed a retrospective, Boundless, in Faqra, and in 2026 Maya Art Space in Beirut presented his solo exhibition The First Step Back. The government of Armenia has decorated him for his contribution to Armenian art.