Gilbert Halaby was born in 1979 and raised among the olive groves and pine-covered hills of Mount Lebanon. From early childhood, the landscape shaped his imagination. He would spend long hours drawing in the shade of trees, where wind and light wove patterns across the ground. The beauty of nature whispered to him quietly, and those whispers became the language of his art.

His academic path led him to study archaeology at the Lebanese University in Beirut, driven by a desire to understand the hidden layers of the past. But it was Rome that called him forward. When he first arrived in the Eternal City, the encounter felt like destiny. In 2003, he settled there and opened a boutique near the Pantheon, where he began crafting jewelry and leather handbags with an artist’s eye for harmony and detail. In time, the boutique blossomed into a full expression of his vision. By 2010, his first women’s collection was released, and in 2016, his atelier on Via di Monserrato opened its doors.

This space was more than a boutique. It became a haven for conversation, reflection, and creative exchange. Shelves lined with books, walls adorned with watercolors and oils, and the quiet hum of ideas filled the air. Visitors not only admired the elegance of his designs but also found themselves drawn to the paintings. One by one, the canvases were taken home by collectors, marking the beginning of a new chapter in his artistic journey.

Entirely self-taught as a painter, Halaby committed himself to the discipline with deep sincerity. His studio, just steps from the boutique, became a sanctuary of solitude and creation. Over the past six years, he has painted daily, developing a voice rooted in memory, intuition, and light. In 2023, he presented his first solo exhibition, Domus Berytus, in Beirut. This was followed by A Roman Comedy in his adoptive city of Rome. In early 2024, Will You Wait for Me Under That Pine Tree opened in Abu Dhabi, followed by Apogee of Light in Palm Beach, and later, The First Harvest on the island of Hydra in Greece.

Halaby’s work carries the quiet strength of reflection. His brush does not rush. It listens. It remembers. Through delicate gestures and carefully chosen tones, he opens a door into a space where silence has a voice and memory becomes matter. There is no need for spectacle, for within the stillness of his compositions lies a deep emotional resonance, one that does not declare itself loudly but lingers gently, like a soft echo within the soul. His paintings unfold like whispered confessions, of longing, of place, of time suspended. They offer no answers, only the grace of presence and the honesty of feeling. In Halaby’s universe, beauty is not a performance but a meditation, and art is not a product but a passage. It is an intimate journey between the visible and the unseen, between what is lost and what is quietly held.

His work is represented in important private collections and is part of the permanent collections of the Malvina Menegaz Foundation in Castelbasso, Italy, the Kinda Foundation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the Lebanese Presidential Contemporary Collection.