Christie’s Hosts Exhibition of Work by Syrian Artist Marwan

Syrian artist has huge retrospective at Christie’s London headquarters

Christie’s third Arab art summer exhibition has just opened in London and this year the auction house is presenting a solo retrospective exhibition of the Syrian artist Marwan Kassab Bachi (1934-2016), known simply as Marwan. Having lived and worked in Germany for most of his life, the non-selling presentation is titled Marwan: A Soul in Exile.

Marwan was born in Damascus, but moved to Germany in the late 1950s after studying at the University of Damascus. He initially lived in Berlin, before being the first artist from the whole of the MENA region to graduate from the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg in 1963. Following his graduation, he worked in a fur factory until 1970, still producing art during this time. The Christie’s exhibition will feature work from the beginning of Marwan’s artistic career, up until his death in 2016. The retrospective will move through different phases of his artistic career, including the Face Landscape series, Heads portraits, and a series of lithographs and works on paper inspired by collaborations made with Arab writers.

The exhibition displays almost 200 works, many of which have been loaned from prestigious private collections, institutions and museums from across Europe and the Middle East. The works encompass everything from paintings to drawings and works on paper, which have been curated by Dr Ridha Moumni, Chairman, Christie’s Middle East & Africa. “Marwan was a profoundly original artist whose deeply moving and distinctive work, shaped by his Syrian heritage and artistic journey in Germany, redefined the portrait as a space for psychological exploration and aesthetic experimentation”, explains Dr Moumni, “Widely regarded as one of the most important Arab artists, Marwan reinvented portraiture through a meditative, introspective practice, and established himself as one of the leading artists of the contemporary German art scene.”

Having lived in Germany for most of his life, Marwan was influenced by both German expressionism and the Neue Wilde artists, but is credited for also responding to Arab political struggles and retaining his Syrian identity. His artistic career spanned six-decades and he is most famous for his portraits - focusing on the head - which morph into landscapes. He layered thick coats of paint to capture the different shades of the skin, using many different colours including pinks, purples, blues and greens. Marwan’s works are not pretty, they are disfigured and loaded in paint. They dissect every part of the human face, with each layer capturing a different expression. His method of painting the head has been likened to “excavating” the different layers of the sitter, even “painting their soul.” The way his figures’ faces transform into landscapes has also been compared to the way in which Sufi poetry has been associated with conversations between land and identity, with his paintings even being described as “metaphysical gateways to universal facets of the human condition”.

Many believe that his works represent the emotions of an artist living in exile, struggling with a devotion to the homeland. “We wanted to highlight one of the most fascinating artists coming from the Arab world,” says Dr Moumni in The National, “Marwan’s work is in several major institutions in the Middle East, but he is also one of the most sought-after Arab artists in the West. His works are held by several prestigious institutions, including the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and recently the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The idea is to really show the legacy of this artist who was living and working in Germany, but who was very important to the Arab world. His paintings describe the political situation of the Middle East, which touch upon his exile and life in Berlin. At the same time, he was able to display his work and voice to the region. He was an important mentor for a generation of artists, affecting their lives and their art. Among them are Said Baalbaki, Ayman Baalbaki and Serwan Baran, to name a few.”

It is no wonder that Christie's have decided to highlight Marwan in this exhibition, with his works typically selling well at the auction house. While the two most recent works to sell through the auction house in July 2025 only sold for £15,120 and £16,380 (a pair of small untitled oil on canvas works from 2004 and 2002), in October 2024, his "Head" (1973) went for £378,000. We are eager to see if the impact of this landmark London exhibition will impact the prices realised by Marwan in future auctions.

Marwan: A Soul in Exile is on view at Christie’s in London between 16 July and 22 August 2025