Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
The Palestinian writer, critic, historian, and visual artist Kamal Youssef Issa Balata was born in the city of Jerusalem in 1942 AD. He received his primary education at the Brothers’ School (Al-Freres), then continued his secondary education at the Bishop’s School (Saint George’s School), from which he graduated in 1960. He learned drawing and painting in the studio of Khalil Halabi (the iconic Jerusalemite artist), in the Bab Al-Khalil neighborhood in Jerusalem, during school holidays.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome (1960–1965), and later continued his studies in Washington (1968–1971) at the Corcoran College of the Museum of Fine Arts.
He lived successively in the United States of America (1968-1992), Morocco (1993-1996), and France (1997-2012), and since his election as a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin in 2012-2013, he moved with his wife to the German capital, Berlin, until he died there. On August 6, 2019.
He held several personal exhibitions in Jerusalem, Amman, Abu Dhabi, Manama, Baghdad, Rabat, Paris, Moscow, Oslo, Tokyo, London, and Amsterdam. Also in the American National Museum in Washington and in the Cooperation Museum in New York in 1988. He was famous for drawing some covers of the Lebanese “Mawaqif” and “Palestinian Affairs” magazines in Beirut.
His works are preserved in private and public collections, including: the British Museum in London, the Islamic Museum in the Alhambra in Granada, and the Arab World Institute in Paris. In the New York Public Library in New York, and the Bibliothèque Louis Notari in Monaco ; And at the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, New Jersey , and the Jordanian National Museum of Fine Arts in Amman.
His book (Conjuring the Place - A Study in Contemporary Palestinian Plastic Art) was published in 2000 in Tunisia, and it included 300 photographs of artistic works by Palestinian artists, nominated by the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, and supported by the “Arab Organization for Education, Science and Culture” affiliated with the Arab League, where he devoted three years to complete it. Balata is considered one of the few art historians in the Arab world.
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