Biography
Raouf Rifai, born in Lebanon in 1954, is an accomplished artist and academic with a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the Sorbonne in Paris. He teaches art at the Lebanese University and is renowned for his large-scale acrylic paintings that depict Middle Eastern men adorned in traditional tarbush hats and garments. Rifai’s use of bright, warm colors emphasizes the rich cultural heritage of the region. His figures often feature abstracted lines that obscure their faces, while exaggerated features animate the canvas with a vivid expressiveness.
In 2010, Rifai received first prize at the Sursock Museum’s Salon d’Automne in Beirut, and his work was auctioned with success at Christie’s Dubai in 2011. He has exhibited widely, participating in numerous group shows across Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and Japan, and has held over fifteen solo exhibitions since 1984 in Lebanon, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, France, and the United States.
