For this year’s Arab Art Exhibition, Christie’s London hosts the most comprehensive exhibition ever staged in Europe of Syrian-German artist Marwan (1934 – 2016). Curated by Dr. Ridha Moumni, Marwan: A Soul in Exile spans six decades of work, tracing the artist’s evolution from early figurative painting to his haunting “face-landscapes” – portraits shaped as inner topographies. For Dr. Moumni, this exhibition is a tribute to a singular voice in Arab modernism, and a reflection on exile, memory, and the role of cultural institutions. In this conversation with Selections Magazine, Dr. Moumni reflects on the curatorial choices, the legacy of Marwan, and the evolving narrative of Arab art on the global stage.
Anastasia Nysten (AN): When did your dialogue with Marwan’s work begin, and how did it evolve into this landmark retrospective?
Dr. Ridha Moumni (RM): Unless one lives in Germany – where several museums display Marwan’s works – there are few opportunities to encounter his art. I discovered his work in various shows, including the Barjeel Art Foundation’s exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in 2017. But I vividly remember the first time I saw his monumental face-landscape painted in 1975–1976, acquired by the Barjeel Art Foundation and exhibited at the Sharjah Art Museum. The visual and emotional impact was immediate and lasting.
When we organised Christie’s first summer exhibition, featuring 100 highlights from the Sharjah-based foundation, we selected one artwork per artist, sometimes two. Marwan was the only exception; we exhibited three of his works. His technique and expressive force made the choice self-evident, and I wanted the audience to fully experience his art and singular vision.
Through my work, I often come across Marwan’s pieces on the market, and they consistently stand out as the most psychologically and emotionally resonant. His style, career, and intellectual depth set him apart. He followed an atypical path, shaped by his experience in Germany, his teaching in Berlin, and his profound influence on generations of Arab artists. Beyond his remarkable painterly skill, Marwan was a cultural figure of unique stature. His close collaborations with thinkers and writers – most notably Abdelrahman Munif – produced a body of literary and critical work, unparalleled in the Arab world.
After curating Ahmed Mater’s mid-career retrospective last year, I felt compelled to shift the focus away from a contemporary lens and toward an artist like Marwan, whose work speaks not only to Arab audiences but also to European viewers.
AN: Was there a specific work or moment in his oeuvre that served as the initial catalyst for curating A Soul in Exile?
RM: I wouldn’t say there was a single work that sparked the idea for this exhibition. Like all great artists, Marwan’s practice evolved through successive phases of transformation and reinvention. From the late 1950s until his death in 2016, he continuously renewed his artistic language.
For me, the most pivotal period began in 1973 – a decade of intense introspection and growing abstraction. It was during this time that Marwan infused the spirit of landscape, particularly the terrain around Damascus, into the genre of portraiture. This fusion gave birth to a body of work that is among the most compelling of his career – emotionally raw, visually powerful, and formally distinct from his earlier production.
The 1976 exhibition at the Orangerie Charlottenburg, which featured 86 works from 1966 to 1976, stands out as a defining moment. Some of the pieces were created specifically for that show and will be part of the current exhibition. This landmark Berlin survey remains one of the most significant exhibitions ever dedicated to an Arab artist in Europe to date.
AN: You’ve spoken before about the importance of memory and migration in Arab art. How did these themes inform your curatorial approach to tracing Marwan’s six-decade journey across Damascus, Berlin, and beyond?
RM: Speaking of exile and belonging is always delicate – territorial displacement affects each individual differently. As an Arab living in England, who lived in France, in Italy, in the US and in the Arab world, I’ve experienced it myself. What fascinates me about artists is how this sense of estrangement – so central, for instance, to last year’s Venice Biennale – can become both a conceptual and creative force. In Marwan’s case, exile didn’t simply shape his biography, it permeated his work. When he arrived in Berlin, he was working in a fur factory by day and painting by night. That early Berlin period, followed by the development of the face landscape, eventually led to the still lives, the marionettes, and the representations of heads.
His paintings speak that language of exile, but only if one is willing to truly read them: to grasp his state of mind, to engage with the writings about him, and to understand the deep relationships he cultivated with poets and writers of the Arab world. In curating this exhibition, I wanted to foreground not only Marwan’s visual language but also his thoughts: his texts, his reflections, his inner landscapes.
I also wanted to highlight moments in his career that revealed his connection not only to Syria, but to what he often called “our world” – the Arab world. Several selected works respond to political conflict and express solidarity with the struggles that shaped the Middle East during the 1960s and 1970s. One room, for example, is dedicated to the 99 Heads, a deeply symbolic series drawn upon Sufi doctrine. Another focusses on his time teaching in Amman at Darat al Funun – an important chapter in his life, and one that reflects his legacy as he influenced a generation of artists like: Ayman Baalbaki, Said Baalbaki, Sarwan Baran, Asma Harb, Hawajri, Taghrit Darghouth, some of whom moved to Germany to continue their training with him. So, what was important for me was to give a full representation to the viewer. It’s complicated for people to understand who Marwan was if they don’t know about his life, and also if they don’t know about his relationship to his homeland. So I approached it in different ways.
AN: Marwan described his process as “excavating souls.” What did you personally discover or unearth while working so closely with his portraits and facial landscapes?
RM: What’s most striking about Marwan’s work, beyond its aesthetic power, is how deeply it invites reflection on the nature of painting and creation itself. His extreme sensitivity, his introspective approach gave rise to a body of work that is both visually imposing and psychologically profound.
Through his paintings, Marwan embarked on a long inner journey: one of dreams, memory, nostalgia, and self-examination. What I find most remarkable is how he confronted, and sometimes even transcended, his artistic obsessions. He managed to probe questions of identity and being without ever resorting to narrative or biography.
And yet, the further he went into complexity, the more he seemed to return to the simplest memories of his childhood. Over time, he came to realise that his body, his face, his spirit were all inextricably linked to the landscapes of Syria – the mountains and rock formations surrounding Damascus. It took him decades to fully embrace this connection. In the end, those landscapes were not only a setting, but an extension of himself. He left part of his soul in Syria and carried the other with him to Germany.
Rarely has an artist captured the trauma of dislocation and the mystery of selfhood with such quiet intensity. His work does not offer answers – it offers presence. A face resting on the earth, between time and eternity.
AN: The exhibition is described as “non-selling.” In a commercial environment like Christie’s, what does it mean to curate something purely for reflection and public engagement? Could this suggest a new model or vision for how institutions might approach Arab art histories?
RM: When we began working on the idea of the summer exhibitions, many people were surprised that Christies’ was staging a non-commercial exhibition, free and open to all. There’s a widespread assumption that such initiatives should be confined to museums or public institutions, and that an auction house has neither the mandate nor the legitimacy to host such programming. I believe that when we have the opportunity, we also carry the responsibility of being cultural actors. With many people, including from the Arab world, visiting London in the summer, we felt it was important to present an exhibition showcasing art from and about the Arab world that audiences might not otherwise encounter.
For two consecutive years, Christie’s has presented some of the most significant exhibitions dedicated to Arab art in London. When I first discussed the idea with our former CEO, Guillaume Cerutti – now President of the Pinault Collection and formerly at the Centre Pompidou – we agreed there was real potential in offering the London public a summer exhibition of Arab art, in a location so close to the Royal Academy and National Gallery.
It was an unprecedented step for us, but by focusing on strong curatorial narratives and cultural relevance, we proved the idea could succeed. The fact that this is now our third summer show is a testament to that. These exhibitions have allowed me to work with passionate teams, and given me a rare freedom to engage directly with collectors, institutions, and artists.
It is also a tremendous pleasure to learn from the works we show, and even more so from the diverse audiences who visit them. The feedback we’ve received has been extraordinary, and the exhibitions have become a cultural moment for a growing community eager to explore Arab modern and contemporary art and history. I wouldn’t claim we’re offering a new model – doing so would be presumptuous – but we are certainly offering a meaningful alternative. After all, art, and the sharing of knowledge, should never be confined to any single type of institution.
AN: This exhibition coincides with growing international interest in artists from the Middle East. What, in your view, is still underrepresented or misunderstood in the Western perception of Arab modernism?
RM: That’s a vast question. In general, Western perceptions of Arab art tend to focus on very specific moments or are framed through narrow lenses. Too often, modern Arab art is either overlooked or presented as a very thin bridge between Islamic heritage and contemporary practice, skipping entirely the richness of its modern history.
Museums in Europe and North America have long lacked a nuanced understanding of our region. Arab culture has historically been underrepresented for a host of social and political reasons. There is also a persistent tendency to view the Arab world as a monolithic entity governed by a single religion or cultural identity, which is deeply inaccurate.
The modern era, particularly in the wake of post-colonialism and nation-building, gave rise to a remarkable flowering of cultural expression across the Arab world. Artists responded with extraordinary creativity to shifting notions of identity, tradition, and modernity. Regional artistic canons, aesthetic vocabularies, and media evolved differently from one country to another, reflecting profound internal diversity.
This complexity remains largely invisible in major art historical narratives. But it is precisely this richness – this combination of knowledge, nuance, and subtlety – that we, as curators, scholars, professionals, and amateurs from the region, must work to promote. Our goal is not just greater visibility within the Arab world, but also deeper representation in Europe and the Americas.
AN: Christie’s has increasingly become a key stage for Arab artists. As Chairman of the Middle East and Africa, how do you navigate the dual roles of cultural stewardship and market leadership?
RM: In my role as Chairman for the Middle East and Africa, I am constantly balancing two distinct yet interconnected responsibilities: the cultural and the commercial. From the outside, the line between the two may appear thin, even blurred. My philosophy has always been clear: cultural and commercial efforts must work in tandem to elevate artists and the works we present or sell. The very artists whose works appear in our auctions are also the protagonists of our institutional efforts. Their visibility, their relevance, and their legacy matter.
That’s why, in recent years, we’ve made a deliberate choice to select works that are representative – not only of individual artists, but of regional movements, geographies, and historical moments. This approach strengthens our ability to serve collectors locally and internationally, while preserving a high level of curatorial integrity.
At Christie’s, we have the privilege of making these choices – whether for exhibitions, sales, or scholarly programming. And we carry the responsibility of contributing to the long-term recognition of the art of the region.
AN: If you could invite Marwan to walk through this exhibition today, what conversation would you hope to have with him? And what do you think he might want to say to today’s young Arab artists working in exile or diaspora?
RM: If Marwan could visit this exhibition today, I imagine he’d be exhausted because I would have asked him hundreds of questions along the way!
More seriously, I’d want to listen. I would ask him about his early years in Syria, how he first learned to paint, and how the trauma and stark contrast of arriving in post-war Berlin, a city still marked by destruction, shaped him as both a man and an artist. I’d want to know what he felt when, after the success of his exhibitions, he was offered a professorship in Berlin, a remarkable achievement for an Arab artist in Europe at that time.
Above all, I’d want to have a deep, personal conversation with him about exile and displacement from his homeland. These themes resonate with me on many levels. I’d want to know how he balanced his private life with the monumental artistic journey he undertook over six decades, and how this same private life helped to shape his oeuvre.
As for what Marwan might say to today’s young Arab artists in exile or diaspora, I could not presume to answer for him. I would turn to his students. Those who studied with him in Berlin, many of them foreigners, or in Amman at Darat al Funun. Artists from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and especially Palestine, whom he supported not just with his knowledge, but with his presence, his gentleness, and his fierce commitment to teaching.
If we want to know what Marwan would say, we should ask those he mentored. They carry his wisdom forward, not as a doctrine, but as a living dialogue.
Location: Christie’s, London, UK.
Date: 16 July until 22 August 2025