Born in Birzeit in 1947, Sliman Mansour was one of the most distinguished artists of the contemporary Palestinian art movement, whose hundreds of artworks since the 1970s have captured the visual vocabulary of Palestinian identity, memory, and resistance.
Growing up in a family of six during the Nakba, Mansour studied at the Evangelical Lutheran School in Bethlehem, where his love and talent for art grew through the unwavering support from one of his first art teachers, Felix Theis. Spending his formative years between Birzeit and Bethlehem, he developed an interest in art and portrait photography, laying the foundation of portraiture as a genre he returned to later in his career. In 1967, he gained admission to the Art Institute of Chicago.
Sliman Mansour (1947–2026)
Yet, the Six-Day War forced a change of plans. He enrolled at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem, and although he did not complete his formal education due to financial concerns, he left in 1970 and established the League of Palestinian Artists in 1973. Co-founded with other young fellow artists, it became the first official art collective in occupied Palestine.
With symbolism rooted in the Palestinian national identity, the enduring olive trees, village scenes, Palestinian women, and traditional embroidery in Mansour’s early work encapsulate the essence of the Palestinian struggle.
One of his most iconic paintings, The Camel of Hardships (1973), depicts an aged man carrying the untainted image of Jerusalem on his back, walking barefoot through a bleak landscape with no end in sight. Navigating estrangement and exile, it symbolizes the Palestinian dream of attaining a homeland, and sumud (steadfastness) in the face of Israeli occupation.
The Camel of Hardships (1973) by Sliman Mansour
The representation of landscapes in his oeuvre are not mere motifs. For Mansour, they serve to strengthen the bond between Palestinians, their culture, and their land unjustly occupied.
In Olive Picking (1988), the two fellah figures tend to the olive tree, expressing their ancient bond with the fruits of the earth, rooted in their Palestinian identity.
Olive Picking (1988) by Sliman Mansour
After the First Intifada in 1987, when the call for freedom echoed in the collective struggle against the Israeli occupation, Mansour, alongside Vera Tamari, Nabil Anani and Tayseer Barakat co-founded the New Visions Collective in 1989. In the spirit of self-reliance and the boycotting of Israeli art supplies, they turned towards local media such as straw, mud, and henna sourced directly from the homeland.
For Mansour, these “artistic experiments helped to change and develop Palestinian art, and it formed a link between traditional art (art done between 1950–1988) and the new contemporary art, which started to be created by young artists at the beginning of the 21st century” (https://www.oncaravan.org/post/checkinginwith-sliman-mansour)
Shrinking Object (1996), utilising mud and wood, features Palestine’s geographical fragmentation and underlines the urgency of international action for Palestine.
Shrinking Object (1996) by Sliman Mansour
Mansour’s endeavours as an artist have always been deeply intertwined with activism. In 1994, he co-founded the Al-Wasiti Arts Centre in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, which offered young artists a space to culturally and creatively engage amidst the ongoing Israeli occupation. Launched in 2006, he was one of the founding directors on the Board of the International Academy of Art in Palestine. He also taught at several cultural and educational institutions such as the Women’s Teachers Training Center in al-Tira and Al-Quds University.
Rituals under occupation (1989) by Sliman Mansour
Renowned as the eminent architect of Palestinian contemporary art, his works have traversed from Palestine into the arena of the international at exhibitions in Paris, New York, Sharjah, Amman, Houston, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi. He also received the Palestine Prize for the Visual Arts and the Grand Nile Prize at the Seventh Cairo Biennial in 1998, the UNESCO–Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture in 2019, and the Necip Fazıl Awards in 2025.
Sliman Mansour passed away on Monday, 24 August 2026 at the age of 79.
Author
Itrisyia Dayini
Itrisyia Dayini is a Malaysian scholar and writer. She holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from University of Oxford and specializes in Modern Middle Eastern Studies, focusing on late Ottoman history.
