Sliman Mansour, Palestinian Resistance Painter, Dies at 78

Sliman Mansour, a pivotal figure in contemporary Arab art, has died in Jerusalem at the age of 78. Born in Birzeit in 1947, just before the Nakba, Mansour studied at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, graduating in 1970. Over five decades, his work became synonymous with Palestinian collective memory and the struggle for self-determination. His iconic painting 'Jamal Al Mahamel' (The Camel of Hardship, 1973) depicts an elderly Palestinian porter carrying the entire city of Jerusalem on his shoulders, a foundational piece in Arab art history. During the 1980s, Mansour faced repression and imprisonment by the Israeli army, which even prohibited the use of the four colors of the Palestinian flag in paintings. In 1989, during the First Intifada, he co-founded the New Visions movement, which rejected Western and Israeli art materials in favor of natural, local elements like mud, henna, spices, coffee, leather, olive oil, and animal glue. Mansour was also a cultural institution builder, co-founding the first art gallery in the West Bank (Gallery 79), the Al-Wasiti Art Center in East Jerusalem, and the first international art academy in Palestinian territories, later integrated into Birzeit University. He continued working until the end, famously stating, 'I believe in art as a social tool, not as decoration for the houses of the rich.' His death marks a profound loss for Palestinian and Arab art.