Sliman Mansour, a renowned Palestinian painter who chronicled over six decades of his country’s fight for liberation, has died in Jerusalem at age 79. Mansour’s family announced the news in an Instagram story post on Monday, August 24, following an earlier announcement that the artist was in “critical condition.” The cause of death has not yet been made public.
“To the world, he leaves behind a life filled with beauty, memory, and a legacy that will continue to live through all those he touched,” the artist’s family wrote in an Instagram story post. “But to us, we lost a father, our source of love, strength, and home.”
Mansour was born in 1947 in Birzeit, Palestine, just months before the mass displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people began under the Nakba and the formal establishment of the State of Israel. Jailed, beaten, and threatened by the Israeli government throughout his career, Mansour remained steadfast in affirming human rights through his paintings. From his studio in Ramallah in the West Bank, the artist chronicled life before Israeli occupation and the subsequent devastation that the Israeli military inflicted on Palestinian civilians and communities.
“Anything that is Palestinian, even just being here, breathing and thinking, is a sensitive matter to the Israelis because they built their narrative around denying our existence,” Mansour told Hyperallergic in a 2023 interview. “Our work not only as painters but as intellectuals — in culture, in everything — is to express that we are here.”
