Tayseer Barakat


Tayseer Barakat is a Palestinian painter, curator, and writer. He also owns a gallery–cafe in Ramallah, where he lives. Barakat was one of the founding members of the League of Palestinian Artists in 1973, and the New Vision art group and movement in 1987.
IG tayseer.barakat

Early life and education

Tayseer Barakat was born in 1959, in the Jabalia refugee camp near Jabalia in the Gaza Strip. His family was from al-Majdal, a village in the Lower Galilee region. As a young adult he moved to the West Bank.
Barakat graduated with a B.A. degree from at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Alexandria University, he attended from 1978 to 1983.

Career

After graduation, he worked at a UNWRA-led women’s teacher training center in Ramallah. He primarily works in the mediums of painting and drawing. Much of his artwork depicts images of flight or escape.
Barakat was one of the founding members of the League of Palestinian Artists art collective in 1973, the other founding artists included Karim Dabbah, Taysir Sharaf, Nabil Anani, Kamel Mughanni, Vera Tamari, Fathi Ghabin, Issam Badr, Suleiman Mansour, Fatin Tubasi, Samira Badran, and Yusuf Duwayk. The group wanted to created Palestinian visual art on native land.
In 1987, the New Visions art collective and movement founded by Barakat, Vera Tamari, Sliman Mansour, and Nabil Anani, and it was formed in response to the First Intifada. As a group they had pledge to make art with naturally found materials, in order to divest from spending money on Israeli art supplies. During this period Barakat began to work with materials such as local clay, wood and fire.
Barakat founded in 1997 the Ziryab Gallery and Cafe in Ramallah, where he also worked as an art curator.
Barakat's artwork is found in museum collections, including at the British Museum in London; Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery in Umm al-Fahm, Israel; and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in Amman.

Exhibitions