Asaad Arabi, born in Damascus in 1941, has spent a lifetime navigating the boundaries between image and emotion, theory and expression, East and West. A painter, theorist, and critic, he has developed a body of work as complex and multifaceted as the cities and figures that inhabit his canvases. Deeply shaped by his memories of Syria, Arabi has continually reinvented his visual language to capture what he calls the rhythms and sensuality of urban life and the human form. His paintings oscillate between abstraction and figuration, often merging the two into a single, fluid vision where color, line, and form become a kind of visual melody.

Since relocating to Paris in 1975, where he completed advanced studies in painting at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts and earned a PhD in Aesthetics from the Sorbonne, Arabi has continued to build a career rooted in both intellectual rigor and emotional resonance. Across his many series, he achieves a subtle balance between structure and spontaneity, deploying color with great sensitivity to reveal emerging bodies, architectural echoes, and layered textures. Whether working in abstract or figurative modes, he composes each piece like a musical score, where visual motifs repeat, evolve, and harmonize.

Music is more than metaphor in Arabi’s work; it is a driving force. He often speaks of sensing form in sound, of hearing the city before painting it. This synesthetic approach imbues his canvases with a lyrical energy that makes them feel both immediate and meditative, personal yet universal.

Over the decades, his work has found its way into prestigious public and private collections around the world, including the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Barcelona Contemporary Museum of Art, the National Museum in New Delhi, the National Museum of Korea in Seoul, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah. Through every brushstroke, Arabi continues to seek the invisible threads that bind sound to sight, memory to place, and sensation to form.

Today, Asaad Arabi’s work continues to resonate across generations, not only for its technical mastery but for its emotional depth and cultural complexity. As both an artist and a thinker, he occupies a singular position in the contemporary art world, bridging traditions while constantly renewing his vision. His canvases invite viewers to pause, to listen with their eyes, and to enter spaces where architecture dissolves into atmosphere, and bodies become echoes of memory. With each composition, Arabi reminds us that painting is not merely a visual act, but a deeply lived experience, where intellect and intuition meet in vibrant harmony.