Portraits Speak Louder Than Words

Christie’s King Street becomes the stage for a powerful and poetic meditation on exile, identity, and the human condition.

From July 16 to August 22, 2025, Marwan: A Soul in Exile brings together over 150 works in a landmark retrospective of the late Syrian-German artist Marwan Kassab-Bachi, a painter whose enigmatic, contorted faces have long been revered as some of the most psychologically complex portraits in modern art.

Curated by Dr Ridha Moumni, Chairman of Christie’s Middle East and Africa, the exhibition is the latest in a growing summer tradition at Christie’s that has been quietly reshaping London’s cultural season.

Following previous presentations that spotlighted Arab modernism and figures such as Ahmed Mater, A Soul in Exile delves deeper, not just into an artist’s personal evolution, but into a lifetime of displacement, introspection, and defiant expression.

Born in Damascus in 1934, Marwan moved to Berlin in 1957, a city that would become both his home and the crucible for his artistic awakening. He studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, graduating in 1963.

While his early works leaned towards abstraction, the human form quickly took centre stage. Marwan’s figures, often solitary, fragmented, and genderless, speak not only to physical isolation but to something far more existential.

One of the earliest works in the show, Landschaft bei Damaskus (1953), on loan from the Berlinische Galerie, sets the tone. From there, the journey follows his shift in Berlin from abstract compositions to uncanny, visceral renderings of the human body.

A pivotal moment comes with Untitled (1969), from the Sharjah Art Foundation; a canvas where perspective dissolves and the figure seems to melt into the emotional fabric of the scene.

Marwan was quickly welcomed into Germany’s post-war avant-garde, finding kinship with artists such as Georg Baselitz and Eugen Schönebeck. Yet he never relinquished his connection to the Middle East.

His haunting painting The Disappeared (1970), loaned by the Barjeel Art Foundation, pays silent homage to those lost in political violence; the covered face becoming a motif not only of anonymity but of grief, remembrance and unresolved trauma.

From the 1970s onward, Marwan turned to the face, not as likeness, but as terrain. These monumental works blur figuration with abstraction, their surfaces layered and scratched, as if the psyche itself were being unearthed.

In Kopf (1974), again from the Berlinische Galerie, the canvas becomes a mirror of the soul, rendered with raw emotional intensity and a refusal to offer easy resolution.

By the 1980s, he was experimenting further with his now-iconic Marionette series, theatrical yet still, vulnerable yet detached. These puppet-like beings are disquieting in their quietude, symbols of suspended agency, and reflections of the artist’s broader concern with identity and control.

Marionette (1983), from the Dalloul Art Foundation in Beirut, stands as a particularly arresting example.

Though celebrated in Germany, it was not until the 1990s that Marwan’s reputation was fully embraced in the Arab world, with exhibitions in Damascus, Beirut, Cairo and later a profound chapter as co-founder of the Summer Academy at Darat al Funun in Amman.

His influence on a younger generation of Arab artists cannot be overstated. Works like The Friend (2002), from The Khalid Shoman Collection, speak to the quiet tenderness and deep humanism that defined his later career.

In his final years, Marwan’s brushwork became looser, more intuitive, more luminous.

Head (2008), from the iSelf Collection in London, is one of his most distilled expressions; a face that floats, ghostlike, between presence and absence. It is both a farewell and a continuation, a whisper of a life spent asking the most profound of questions through paint.

Dr Ridha Moumni reflects: “Marwan was an artist of extraordinary sensitivity and depth. His faces are not just depictions, they are topographies of the soul, bearing witness to the inner lives of those caught between worlds. This exhibition is both a tribute and an overdue reintroduction.”

A Soul in Exile is a rare convergence of scholarship, cultural stewardship and curatorial ambition. Works have been loaned by the Atassi Foundation (Dubai), Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah), Berlinische Galerie (Berlin), the Khalid Shoman Collection (Amman), iSelf Collection (London), Pinault Collection (Paris), and the Dalloul Art Foundation (Beirut), among others.

The exhibition is made possible through the support of Standard Chartered Global Private Bank, alongside sponsors Barjeel Art Foundation, the Dalloul Art Foundation and the Rambourg Foundation.

Events partner Jumeirah ensures the guest experience meets the standards expected from a season of this calibre.

Christie’s Education will host a bespoke, three-day in-person course (21 to 23 July) designed to introduce collectors and art patrons to the world of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern art.

Anchored by exclusive curator-led tours, the programme explores the aesthetics and politics of Arab art from modernist beginnings to contemporary movements shaped by migration and identity.

A Soul in Exile opens on 16 July and runs through 22 August 2025. Entry is free. For those who seek to feel art deeply, unforgettably, this exhibition is not to be missed.