Mentorship Traces in the Archive | Case: Marwan Kassab Bachi and Gazan Artists

Ala Younis

al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYU Abu Dhabi

March 29, 2026*

This article traces the mentorship legacy of Syrian-German artist Marwan Kassab-Bachi, following the thread from his exhibitions at Darat al Funun in the 1990s to his donation of works to Palestinian cultural institutions and his leadership of the Summer Academy. Drawing on newly digitized archival materials by al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, it shows how that mentorship shaped a generation of Gazan artists who went on to build their own collective practice, and how those connections endured despite displacement, siege, and war.

The exhibitions of Marwan Kassab-Bachi (1934–2016) at Darat al Funun in Amman, held in 1995, 1996, and 1998, afforded the artist an expansive platform through which to forge meaningful connections with fellow artists and intellectuals from across the region. At the 1996 exhibition, for instance, he launched the book Marwan: Journey of Life and Art, a reflective dialogue between him and novelist Abdul Rahman Munif, tracing the formation of an artist shaped by exile, memory, and inner struggle. Blending conversation and introspection, the book, as well as the discussion in the event, explores how the human face becomes a vessel for history, emotion, and existential experience.

At an event related to Marwan's third exhibition in 1998, Dr. Jörn Merkert, then director of the Berlinische Galerie, spoke on the characteristics of Marwan's expressionist style and pointed to the surrounding artworks in the room. Earlier in the event, the artist led the audience through a slide presentation of his works. As the slides progressed, his Three Palestinian Boys (1970) appeared on screen. Marwan paused to reflect on the painting's subject: the young men who had joined the Palestinian revolution in the late 1960s.

The painting presents three adolescent boys standing shoulder to shoulder, seen from a slightly low angle that lends them a solemn, monumental quality. Their bodies are loosely rendered, with elongated necks and simplified features that verge on distortion. The central figure dominates the composition, his head tilted slightly upward, eyes half-closed or unfocused, while the two figures flanking him echo this stillness, their gazes turned inward and away. The palette is subdued — earthy browns, muted greens, and pale flesh tones — set against a neutral ground that isolates the figures and concentrates their emotional presence. Their clothing, monochrome and loose, heavy with folds, suggests both movement and hardship. Taken together, the work bears the emotional weight of the conflict that shaped the generation it depicts.

Beyond the oil painting (130 x 162 cm) itself, a same-year compositional study (oil on canvas, 60 x 45 cm) and drypoint aquatint prints (48.5 x 58.5 cm, in 30 editions) also exist. A reproduction of the print appears on the cover of a 1998 catalog titled To the Children of Palestine. That work was among the seventy-four signed and numbered lithographs, China ink drawings, hand prints, and watercolors donated by the artist to the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, and Birzeit University— a gift Marwan announced at the opening of his third exhibition at Darat al Funun in April 1998.

This path for Marwan's works to reach Palestine opened through an invitation extended by Tania Nasir — a writer, singer, and wife of Dr. Hanna Nasir, the former president of Birzeit University. In 1994/5, she approached the Palestinian-German musicologist Habib Touma with a reflection on the importance of exiled Arab artists visiting Palestine in the post-Oslo period: an opportunity, she felt, to contribute to and enrich a cultural life long suppressed under occupation. Touma, a close friend of Marwan, offered to carry her letter to him directly. The artist replied by fax, his message suffused with emotion, writing of a lifelong dream of visiting Palestine and of his unwavering commitment to its cause.

Planning began to take shape from that point, unfolding gradually over the course of several years. Nasir maintained a close friendship with Dr. Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, who served as director of the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center from 1996 to 2005, and in 1997, Nasir herself joined the Center's board. The newly established Goethe-Institut in Ramallah, under the leadership of Dr. Manfred Wust, was equally disposed to supporting nascent Palestinian cultural institutions. Through sustained consultation with Marwan, the Goethe-Institut, and artist Suha Shoman, founder of Darat al Funun, the proposal evolved into a formal donation of works by the artist, divided between the Sakakini and Birzeit University as its institutional custodians. Fifty-four of these works remain in the Sakakini's care today.

As a Syrian national, Marwan was forbidden from entering Palestine and was therefore unable to attend the exhibition openings, deputizing his friend Dr. Jörn Merkert to attend both and speak on his behalf. Merkert also contributed a substantial text to the exhibition catalog, which bore the same title as the collection and featured reproductions of all seventy-four donated works alongside their captions, dimensions, and medium. In the months following the Birzeit exhibition, the Sakakini sent a selection of Marwan's works on tour to Jerusalem, Nablus, Hebron, Bethlehem, and Gaza. Joachim Sartorius — the German poet, then Secretary General of the Goethe-Institut in Munich, and a personal friend of Marwan, contributed to the publication too, and attended the opening of the Gaza exhibition at the Arts and Crafts Village in 1999.

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The archives shed light on Marwan's mentorship of emerging Arab artists through the four editions of the Summer Academy he led at Darat al Funun in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2003. As a professor of painting at the Hochschule der Künste (now Berlin University of the Arts), Marwan shared with artist Suha Shoman a deep commitment to working closely with young Arab artists and to the possibilities of dedicated mentorship. Conducted in Arabic, the Academy allowed Marwan to draw emerging artists into sustained discussions of international art practice and theory, while remaining attentive to the regional context and to the particular conditions of art education within it.

A faxed letter Marwan sent from Berlin to artist Ali Maher, the first director of Darat al Funun, on July 22, 1999, illuminates the Academy's practical workings. Marwan confirms logistical arrangements for the Academy, travel tickets, materials to be sourced in Amman, and the requirement that students bring documentation of their work. Its matter-of-fact tone conveys the instructive seriousness with which he approached the endeavor:

Young artists expressed their interest by submitting an application form comprising a personal statement and images of their work. The Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah circulated Darat al Funun's open call in Palestine through local media and served as a collecting point for applications, which arrived in considerable and varied numbers, spanning a wide range of artistic maturity. The Center then short-listed candidates before forwarding them to Darat al Funun and Marwan for final selection — an arrangement that continued across each subsequent edition of the Academy. The recommended artists were overwhelmingly from Gaza.

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Three years before the Academy's inaugural edition, in 1996, artists Mohamed Hawajri and Raed Issa were part of the Gaza-based Liberated Colors Group. The collective worked on a collaborative Japanese-Palestinian project that painted murals in schools and public spaces across Gaza. Running for about two years, and with artist Mohamed Abusal also joining the group, the project helped the artists strengthen their relationship, particularly as all three lived in the Bureij refugee camp.

In 1998, after the project's completion, the group collaborated with the Young Journalist Club, founded by the Gazan journalist Ghassan Radwan. That same year, Hawajri, Issa, and others created Jerusalem is a Bridge for Return. A rich composition with its left and right registers converging toward the luminous Dome of the Rock, suspended beneath a spectral moon. From the left, a procession of workers, students, and maternal figures advances with flags and olive branches; they wear traditional garments, and their faint villages linger on the horizon. From the right, successive generations of refugees emerge from clustered tents, their movement equally directed toward the sacred center thick with allegory: skulls and restless waves, flowers, and doves, all painted with hues of blue. Their mural was the largest in the Gaza Strip, unveiled during a major Nakba Remembrance Day event in the same year.

The three Palestinian artists, Hawajri, Issa, and Abusal, were eager to participate in Darat’s Summer Academy and sent filled application forms for the inaugural edition. They enclosed photo documentation of their work and the murals, including a collaged set of photographs that would show a panorama of their Jerusalem is a Bridge for Return. They also sent along a joint letter serving as their artist statement. Their letter was a modest, earnest, and precise articulation about how they were a group of young artists from the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, self-taught and trained through informal courses rather than formal art education. They wrote of their shared passion for art, their eagerness to deepen their practice, and their hope that what they learn may, in turn, serve their community. The letter read:

We are young artists from the same country, the same land, and the same neighborhood. All of us are from the Bureij refugee camp, located in the heart of Gaza. Our shared place and a common artistic sensibility unite us. We love art and learn it through intuition and practice. Despite pursuing university degrees in fields unrelated to art, our passion has always been for art.

We are deeply interested in exhibitions, museums, and everything about art and artists that is shared through media and other outlets. None of us holds an academic degree in art. Still, we studied the principles of artistic design (graphics and oil painting) through courses at an association under the guidance of the artist Fayeq Al-Sarsawi. We also studied children's book illustrations for thirty hours under the French illustrator Daniel Maja and mural painting using colors under the Japanese artist Kimitani for several months.

We are always eager to gain more artistic knowledge and cultural understanding. We rushed to register and join when we heard about this unique program. We hope you accept us as students so we can learn from you and contribute to our community with the knowledge we gain.

The three artists were accepted alongside twelve others from Jordan and Syria. Upon their arrival in Amman, they began working at Darat al Funun's workshop under Marwan's daily supervision — in both one-to-one and group sessions — with assistance from the Berlin-based Lebanese artist Salah Saouli. Teaching in Arabic was a natural advantage, fostering close exchange among participants from across the region as they gained experience in painting and printmaking, making full use of the materials and press available in the workshop. Under their mentor's guidance, the participants' works evolved in form, theme, and color. At the close of the Academy, the resulting works were exhibited and offered for sale, allowing the artists to return home with both earnings and new work to show in their own cities.

The press covered the Summer Academy widely, while Marwan, no less than his mentees, reported to the directorship of Darat al Funun on their shared excitement with the results. Writing to Ibrahim Izz Al-Din, General Director of the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, in October 1999, Marwan reflected on the Academy with evident pride, describing its impact as reaching well beyond Amman or Jordan, and expressing how much he was moved by the creative potential he had witnessed in the participants. He wrote warmly of the Foundation's support for what he saw as a rare opportunity to serve both culture and the nation, and closed with the sense that his initial intuition about the Academy's significance had been more than borne out. His letter read:

The enthusiasm generated by the inaugural edition carried through three further seasons of the Summer Academy. In 2000, Mohammed Hawajri returned to Amman alongside fellow Gazan and Palestinian artists, joining a group that now included participants from Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Group photographs preserved in both the Marwan Kassab-Bachi Collection at al Mawrid and Darat al Funun's archive show critique sessions in which participants spread their drawings, paintings, and sketches across tables and floors, gathering around their mentor as he moved among the works, pointer in hand, sharing his observations. Artists would rework existing pieces or make new ones in the lead-up to the final exhibition, departing with their works and a certificate of participation. On many occasions, Marwan also wrote statements about individual students' works for use in their future exhibition publications.

Concurrently, the Sakakini launched a program of solo exhibitions dedicated to young artists developing new contemporary practices; in its early years, the artists featured were predominantly graduates of the Darat al Funun Summer Academy.

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The knowledge and skills gained through the Summer Academy gave these artists a foundation from which to organize their own exhibitions and workshops. By 2000, Hawajri, Issa, and Abusal were among a group that created Eltiqa (Arabic for encounter), formalizing their commitment to collective practice, exhibitions, and workshops as a sustained platform for contemporary art in Gaza. In founding and developing Eltiqa, these artists translated what they had absorbed under Marwan's guidance into a local institution of their own, replicating in the conditions available to them the spirit of collective making, critique, and exchange that had defined their time at Darat al Funun. That resourcefulness, artistic, organizational, and material, would prove essential in the years that followed, as Gaza grew increasingly isolated. The Second Intifada and its aftermath brought intensified restrictions on movement and access, and Gaza in particular became subject to a siege from 2006 that would progressively sever its artists from the wider world. Artists responded with resourcefulness, finding ways to replenish materials or source them during the brief windows when travel became possible. They also invited fellow artists to conduct (online) workshops and training sessions, where they and younger artists could learn together.

In 2010, they organized an exhibition of Marwan's works at Eltiqa Artists House in Gaza City. In a hall filled with art and visitors, an emotional Marwan, still unable to travel to Palestine in person, addressed the audience by phone. The mentor maintained these warm connections until his death in 2016. Meanwhile, Eltiqa continued to nurture new artists, deepening the legacy of the mentorship from which it had grown, until the war brought that continuity to a violent halt.

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Artists and partners Mohammed Hawajri and Dina Matar fled with their children from their family home in Al Bureij camp in Gaza before air strikes destroyed it in October 2023. Temporarily displaced in a tent in Rafah, they risked returning to the house to retrieve essentials, only to find some of their artworks buried under the rubble. They salvaged what they could, returning with some of their children to bring more work from the destroyed studio, carrying the rescued stacks and rolls on carts. They brought them first to a temporary home in Cairo, before eventually settling in the United Arab Emirates. Among the salvaged works is a significant body produced by Hawajri under Marwan's mentorship at Darat al Funun in 2000 and 2001.

What the archive makes visible, and what the display sought to hold together, is a network of relationships sustained across distance, restriction, and mentorship. Three Palestinian Boys moved through formats and contexts accumulating meaning with each transfer. At least three artists from Bureij camp carried what they learned in Amman back to Gaza, where they nurtured further, their art and other artists in turn.

Ala Younis is an artist, curator, and publisher. She served as Research Scholar at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, NYU Abu Dhabi, from 2022 to 2025, and previously worked at Darat al Funun from 2006 to 2010, holding the positions of Assistant Director and later Artistic Director. She is currently pursuing a DPhil in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Her practice spans curatorial, publishing, and film projects, often seeking instances where historical and political events collapse into personal ones.

* This article was first published in April 2025 and revised in March 2026 with additional historical details provided by Dr. Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, based on her directorship of the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center (1996–2005) and the relationship with Darat al Funun Summer Academy.