Nabil Nahas Selected for Lebanon's Venice Biennale Pavilion in 2026

Nabil Nahas will create Lebanon's national presentation at the 61st Venice Biennale opening in April 2026. The announcement came from Dubai gallery Lawrie Shabibi on May 19. Born in Beirut in 1949, Nahas creates textured paintings blending Islamic art traditions with American abstract expressionism. His work incorporates organic materials like seashells and starfish while depicting Lebanese cedars, olive trees, and palm trees. After studying at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he earned an MFA, Nahas returned to Lebanon following nearly two decades in the United States. He now splits his time between Beirut and New York. Major institutions including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, London's Tate Modern, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi hold his works in their collections. The pavilion is co-organized by Paris-based Lebanese Visual Art Association and French curator Nada Ghandour, who described Nahas's visual language as blending abstraction and figuration. The selection committee noted his work connects contemporary concerns with spiritual and material dimensions.