Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour, one of the most important figures of modern Palestinian art, recently died at the age of 79 after a long illness. Born in Birzeit in 1947, Mansour spent more than five decades turning art into a powerful expression of Palestinian identity, memory and resistance.
His paintings gave visual form to the Palestinian experience of dispossession, exile and life under occupation. Farmers, olive trees, village houses, traditional thobes, keys of return and the Palestinian landscape became recurring symbols in his work. Paintings such as Patience and Hope, The Renaissance, Rituals Under Occupation and The Sea Is Mine transformed these symbols into powerful statements of steadfastness and hope.
During the First Intifada, Mansour helped establish the ‘New Vision art group’. Palestinian artists turned to local materials such as mud, straw, wood and natural dyes, making art itself an act of cultural resistance.
For Palestinians, Mansour was more than a painter. He was a symbol of resistance through art—an artist who preserved a people’s history, identity and connection to their land on canvas. His work leaves behind a visual legacy of Palestine that will endure for generations.
