Nabil Nahas Lebanese, b. 1949

Born in Beirut in 1949, Nabil Nahas creates paintings with surfaces that seem to breathe, bloom, and multiply, dense with organic texture, form, and saturated colour. Drawn to the intricate geometries of the natural world, from fractal patterns to tidal rhythms and marine life, he builds sculptural compositions that hover between abstraction and the living world. Palm trees, cedars, and starfish recur, rooted in the landscapes of his childhood in Beirut and Cairo. His practice is attuned to the patterns of nature while also engaging with the lineage of Western abstraction. Beyond the influence of his American peers, Nahas has consistently drawn inspiration from Islamic visual culture, particularly in his engagement with geometric patterns, arabesques, calligraphy, and the non-representational qualities of his work.

Nahas spent the first ten years of his life in Cairo due to his father’s work, then returned to Lebanon to attend boarding school near Beirut. He later moved to the United States, earning a BFA from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, in 1971, followed by an MFA from Yale University in 1973. At Yale, he encountered the work of artists such as Frank Stella and Larry Poons, finding stimulus in Stella’s large-scale geometric paintings and Poons’s pared-back treatment of shape. Nahas represented Lebanon in the 25th Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil in 2002.  In 2013, Nahas received the National Order of the Cedar for his contribution to Lebanese culture, an honour rarely awarded to visual artists. For more than three decades, Nahas has exhibited internationally, with his first major museum retrospective held at the Beirut Exhibition Center in 2010. His work is held in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi; Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and the British Museum, London.

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