Nabil Abu Hamad

Nabil Abu Hamad is an painter, political cartoonist and caricaturist, with a weekly cartoon in Al-Hayat newspaper. He was born in the small Palestinian village of Kufr Yassis of a Lebanese father and Palestinian mother. After 1948 the whole family moved to Lebanon, where he studied law, literature and art, starting work on Lebanese newspapers as a cartoonist before becoming art director for 25 years for the weekly political magazine Al-Hawadeth. When the magazine was forced to move from Beirut in 1977 during the civil war, he and his family moved with it to London, where they still live. He has exhibited his work at solo and group exhibitions in Beirut and London and studied drawing, printmaking and lithography at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art. In 1988 he and his wife, Marie Sabia, founded the Argile Gallery, showing many international artists. A collection of his caricatures of well-known figures, Face Facts, was published by Cygnus, London. Nabil Abu Hamad is also the author of two collections of short stories, and of two novels – Al-Ateleey [The Cripple], to be excerpted in a forthcoming Banipal issue, and Beit min Al-Sharq [House from the East].

Woman Seated, 100 x 100 cms, oil on canvas, 2004

Untitled, 80 x 100 cms, oil oncanvas, 2006 Front cover: Portrait of Naguib Mahfouz painted especially for Banipal: 42 x 58 cms, acrylic on board, 2006

Bass Players, 70 x 70 cms, oil on canvas, 2004