Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Kareem Dabbah (Abu Ashraf; April 21, 1937 - February 9, 2021) is
a Palestinian plastic artist, considered one of the pillars of plastic art in
Palestine. Karim worked as a lecturer for plastic arts in a number of
Palestinian universities, and he also founded the Naji Al-Ali Art Association
in 1988.
his life
Karim Qustandi Dabbah was born in the Qatamon neighborhood, west
of Jerusalem, on April 21, 1937 AD. In 1944, his father decided to move from
the Qatamon neighborhood to Ramallah. Karim studied at Ramallah Elementary
School, then moved in the early 1950s to the National College to complete His
preparatory studies, after the closure of schools due to the Nakba.
He was interested in politics. He was arrested at the beginning
of his political career by the Badia units of the Jordanian army, where he was
placed in Al-Jafr prison, where he met in prison with a number of members of
the Communist Party, including Fouad Nassar, the party's secretary-general.
Karim was released in 1957, when the Jordanian king ordered the release of all
secondary students detained in Al-Jafr and the rest of Jordan's prisons, then
he returned to Ramallah. He joined the Jordanian Communist Party, and became a
leader in the Palestinian Communist Party since its re-establishment in 1982.
He traveled to Kuwait in the early sixties of the twentieth
century, and worked in the oil field, before he obtained a Soviet mission to
study the art of copper forging and its artwork. Therefore, he left Kuwait in
1968 and went directly to Moscow State University, where he studied the Russian
language, then completed five years specializing in plastic arts, learning the
arts of oil painting, sculpture and plastic art prints, and obtained a master’s
degree in handicrafts and ceramics.
He returned to Palestine in 1973 and enrolled as a lecturer in
plastic arts at An-Najah National College, then was elected a member of the
administrative board of the Plastic Artists Association in 1974. He later left
the association and formed the Naji Al-Ali Arts Association in 1988. He also
worked as a lecturer for plastic arts at Birzeit University, and then founded a
department Arts at Al-Quds University in 2010. After that, he worked for two
years at Al-Quds Open University, then decided to retire in 2014 and devote
himself to plastic art and participate in group exhibitions.
Karim participated in a number of personal and group art
exhibitions, the most prominent of which was the Return and Beginnings of 2014
exhibition in the city of Ramallah, during which he displayed 27 paintings, the
most prominent of which was a poster of the young martyr Muhammad Abu Khudair,
as well as posters simulating the prisoners’ hunger strike and the standing of
our people against the arrogance of the Israeli occupation. .
his death
He died in Ramallah on February 9, 2021 AD, corresponding to
Jumada II 1442 AH, at the age of 84. Buried on February 10, 2021 in the New
Ramallah Cemetery. The Palestinian Ministry of Culture mourned him in a
statement, “Palestine has lost one of the most prominent figures and pillars of
plastic art and its most important great artists who enriched the national
culture and Palestinian art.” It added that Karim Dabbah participated “in
several personal and collective art exhibitions that simulate the killing and
destruction of Palestinians by the occupation attacks.” And arrest.”
The third and seventh funerals were held for him on February 12,
2021, in the Greek Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, in
Ramallah.
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Achievements and Awards
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