Berlin is famous for its walls and for decades a select group of people have treasured lumps of its former Cold War dividing line.
There is something appropriate about a chunk of wall from the Berlin studio of Marwan Kassab-Bachi sitting at the heart of a blockbuster exhibition of his work at Christie's in central London.
The mountain is his soul staying in the landscape and in the soil of Syria
Ridha Moumni,
Christie's Middle East
The Mayfair institution has been taken over by a display of Marwan's work that does full justice to his long career, which was almost entirely based in Berlin.
It was his roots in Syria that helped to shape his work.
A practitioner of art as an enigmatic expression of the soul, Marwan is seen by Christie's curator Ridha Moumni as working out a deep attachment to his Syrian childhood in his paintings.
Not least in the breakthrough period of his work when Maran painted many heads reclining but with an identifiable landscape on the canvas.
You can take the boy out of the foothills of Mount Qasioun but for the painter it was a lifelong resource. The exhibition sets this up with a series of almost monochrome postwar Berlin photographs by the famed Henri Cartier-Bresson.
The chairman of Christie's Middle East and Africa has chose Marwan: A Soul in Exile as the third Christies summer series on art of the Arab World.
Works like the Parisian Head in 1973 or Kopf moved the focus to the head with rich, deep French-inspired use of colour to show how he brooded on his past, almost like a man lost in thought staring into a mirror. The mountain is never depicted but its brows and ridges are reflected in the flesh.
"The head is mixing directly with the landscape," says Mr Moumni at one point of a tour on the opening morning of the month-long retrospective. "He acknowledged that the faces and the heads that he's painting all his life are part of the mountain. The mountain is the core of his painting - the–mountain is his soul staying in the landscape and in the soil of Syria."
From the 1967 war through to the outset of the 1970s, Marwan's work took on a political dimension with piece such as The Disappeared, where handkerchiefs and scarves covered the faces. There was also the haunting Three Palestinian Boys in 1970.
"When the veil comes over the face it is almost a feeling of the disappearance but also a feeling of covering the face in front of the atrocities of the world," said Mr Moumni. "This is a very, very strong and impactful painting from 1970.
"The Three Palestinian Boys is a painting that was displayed very extensively through his life and it is not only a work on that did not only on the displacement but what he wanted to do was a representation of the Palestinian voice. This is why he represented them from below."
The dramatic perspective flips Marwan's usual order with big bodies and small hands and, crucially, heads. Typically the head or the face dominated his work but not in this case.
Meanwhile, as the decade progressed he would go on to develop portraits of political figures such as the Syrian Munif Al Razzaz or the Iraqi Badr Shakir Al Sayyab.
Intimate artist
Marwan eventually resumed his direct relationship with Syria. He was not banned from his home country, although he had suffered the schism of his family land being seized not long after he started studying in Berlin in 1957.
A trove of his correspondence in Arabic forms a side exhibit and is as illuminating as the body of paintings. "Marwan was very poetic in the way he was writing -he was really writing almost like a poet," he added. "He was writing these letters in Arabic to people and showing that reading and writing in Arabic and using Arabic letters and its literature was very important for him."
Homeward bound
In the 1990s what had been an intermittent relationship with the Middle East and his work – he exhibited at the Arab Cultural Centre in Damascus in 1970 – came to be a part of his career.
A portrait of Mona Atassi, the driving force behind the Attasi Foundation, by Marwan is part of the exhibition for that reason. As director of the summer academy at Darat Al Funun in Amman, he became a mentor to a generation of Arab artists.
In the decade before his death in 2016, Mr Marwan honed in on the face and in these paintings what surrounds the faces are telling, according to Mr Moumni. In this as elsewhere in his work there are hallmarks of a Cezanne influence.
"What you see around [the face] is the question of the soil but also the question of the death," he explains of one work. "The hair is creating almost a continuity with the landscape and here it's almost a wall, almost a darkness created by the idea of the afterlife."
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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UAE
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Company profile
Date started: 2015
Founder: John Tsioris and Ioanna Angelidaki
Based: Dubai
Sector: Online grocery delivery
Staff: 200
Funding: Undisclosed, but investors include the Jabbar Internet Group and Venture Friends
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Islamophobia definition
A widely accepted definition was made by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in 2019: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” It further defines it as “inciting hatred or violence against Muslims”.
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UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
Company%20profile
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
The bio
Favourite book: Peter Rabbit. I used to read it to my three children and still read it myself. If I am feeling down it brings back good memories.
Best thing about your job: Getting to help people. My mum always told me never to pass up an opportunity to do a good deed.
Best part of life in the UAE: The weather. The constant sunshine is amazing and there is always something to do, you have so many options when it comes to how to spend your day.
Favourite holiday destination: Malaysia. I went there for my honeymoon and ended up volunteering to teach local children for a few hours each day. It is such a special place and I plan to retire there one day.
Company Profile:
Name: The Protein Bakeshop
Date of start: 2013
Founders: Rashi Chowdhary and Saad Umerani
Based: Dubai
Size, number of employees: 12
Funding/investors: $400,000 (2018)
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Winner: Maaly Al Reef, Bernardo Pinheiro, Abdallah Al Hammadi
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Winner: Jinjal, Fabrice Veron, Ahmed Al Shemaili
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Winner: Al Sail, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
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252 projectors installed on Al Wasl dome
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550 tonnes of moulded steel were raised last year to cap the dome
724,000 cubic metres is the space it encloses
Stands taller than the leaning tower of Pisa
Steel trellis dome is one of the largest single structures on site
The size of 16 tennis courts and weighs as much as 500 elephants
Al Wasl means connection in Arabic
World’s largest 360-degree projection surface
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cylinder petrol
Power: 154bhp
Torque: 250Nm
Transmission: 7-speed automatic with 8-speed sports option
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'The Sky is Everywhere'
Director:Josephine Decker
Stars:Grace Kaufman, Pico Alexander, Jacques Colimon
Rating:2/5
THE SPECS
Engine: 3.5-litre supercharged V6
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JAPAN SQUAD
Goalkeepers: Masaaki Higashiguchi, Shuichi Gonda, Daniel Schmidt
Defenders: Yuto Nagatomo, Tomoaki Makino, Maya Yoshida, Sho Sasaki, Hiroki Sakai, Sei Muroya, Genta Miura, Takehiro Tomiyasu
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Forwards: Yuya Osako, Takuma Asano, Koya Kitagawa
More from Neighbourhood Watch:
Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi
Director: Kangana Ranaut, Krish Jagarlamudi
Producer: Zee Studios, Kamal Jain
Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Ankita Lokhande, Danny Denzongpa, Atul Kulkarni
Rating: 2.5/5
Groom and Two Brides
Director: Elie Semaan
Starring: Abdullah Boushehri, Laila Abdallah, Lulwa Almulla
Rating: 3/5
Wicked: For Good
Director: Jon M Chu
Starring: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Jonathan Bailey, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, Ethan Slater
Rating: 4/5
UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FIXTURES
All kick-off times 10.45pm UAE ( 4 GMT) unless stated
Tuesday
Sevilla v Maribor
Spartak Moscow v Liverpool
Manchester City v Shakhtar Donetsk
Napoli v Feyenoord
Besiktas v RB Leipzig
Monaco v Porto
Apoel Nicosia v Tottenham Hotspur
Borussia Dortmund v Real Madrid
Wednesday
Basel v Benfica
CSKA Moscow Manchester United
Paris Saint-Germain v Bayern Munich
Anderlecht v Celtic
Qarabag v Roma (8pm)
Atletico Madrid v Chelsea
Juventus v Olympiakos
Sporting Lisbon v Barcelona
Terror attacks in Paris, November 13, 2015
- At 9.16pm, three suicide attackers killed one person outside the Atade de France during a foootball match between France and Germany
- At 9.25pm, three attackers opened fire on restaurants and cafes over 20 minutes, killing 39 people
- Shortly after 9.40pm, three other attackers launched a three-hour raid on the Bataclan, in which 1,500 people had gathered to watch a rock concert. In total, 90 people were killed
- Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the terrorists, did not directly participate in the attacks, thought to be due to a technical glitch in his suicide vest
- He fled to Belgium and was involved in attacks on Brussels in March 2016. He is serving a life sentence in France
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
