Ibrahim Hassan Kheite (1930–1984), also known as Ibrahim Ghannam, was a

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

visual artist and painter. He was born in the coastal town of Yajur near

Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...

Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...

and later resided in Tal Al-Za'atar

refugee camp A refugee camp is a temporary Human settlement, settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for in ...

, located north of

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

Biography

Ghannam suffered from

Gout Gout ( ) is a form of inflammatory arthritis characterized by recurrent attacks of pain in a red, tender, hot, and Joint effusion, swollen joint, caused by the deposition of needle-like crystals of uric acid known as monosodium urate crysta ...

since childhood, which led him to rely on a wheelchair for mobility throughout his life.

Gannit Ankori Gannit Ankori (Hebrew: גנית אנקורי) is an Israeli art historian. She is Professor of Fine Arts and chair in Israeli Art at the Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University. She was previously chair of the Department of Art History at ...

, ''Palestinian Art'', Reaktion Books, 2006, p. 54. Despite his physical challenges, he persevered in his passion for painting, thanks to a

UNWRA The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA, pronounced ) is a United Nations System, UN agency that supports the relief and Human development (economics), human development of Palestinian refugee ...

nurse who provided him with painting materials. Ghannam depicted scenes of village life in Yajur, in a

naïve Naivety (also spelled naïvety), naiveness, or naïveté is the state of being naive. It refers to an apparent or actual lack of experience and sophistication, often describing a neglect of pragmatism in favor of moral idealism. A ''naïve'' may ...

style using bright colours and a meticulousness approach to detail reminiscent of the Islamic miniaturists. Ghannam's choice to paint evocative village life, a far cry from his room overlooking an open sewer, and his subsistence diet of canned foods. By transcending his harsh reality to capture vibrant rural scenes, he was able to preserve the visual memory of bountiful Palestinian countryside for a generation of children born in the refugee camp. In addition to this visionary approach to his own work, Ghannam was also one of the founding members of the General Union of Palestinian Artists and the General Federation of Arab Artists. Ghannam is the subject of Adnan Mdanat's 1977 documentary film, ''Palestinian Visions''. He said in an interview, "I feel that my life stopped at the age of 17, because that is how old I was when I left, and I only live when I dream of those days."The Palestinians, by Jonathan Dimbleby
Ghannam found solace in playing the

oud The oud ( ; , ) is a Middle Eastern short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped, fretless stringed instrument (a chordophone in the Hornbostel–Sachs classification of instruments), usually with 11 strings grouped in six courses, but some models have ...

(as pictured here).

Exhibitions

* 2020, ''The Naïve Arab Artist: Naïfs, Outsiders, L’art Autre, and L’art Brut in the Middle East,'' American University of Beirut Art Galleries, Beirut, Lebanon

References

Sources

Palestine Foundation for Culture
(in Arabic) 1930 births 1984 deaths Artists from Beirut Contemporary painters Palestinian male painters 20th-century Palestinian male artists 20th-century Palestinian painters 20th-century Lebanese painters 20th-century Lebanese artists 20th-century illustrators Lebanese illustrators 20th-century Palestinian illustrators {{Palestine-painter-stub

Biography

Exhibitions

See also

References

Sources