Sliman Mansour (also Suleiman or Suliman, Arabic: سليمان منصور, born 1947) is a Palestinian painter, sculptor, author and cartoonist, considered a leading figure among contemporary Palestinian artists. Mansour is considered an artist of intifada whose work captures the cultural concept of sumud.[2] His paintings which have been exhibited around the world reflect the Palestinian struggle and include images of women in Palestinian traditional costumes and Levantine tree-filled landscapes. In 1987, he was part of the New Visions collective that boycotted Israeli supplies and instead used local natural Palestinian materials.
Palestinian artist and scholar Samia Halaby has identified Mansour as part of the Liberation Art Movement and cites his important work as an artist and cultural practitioner before and after the Intifada.[3]
Mansour was born in 1947, one year before the Nakba, in Birzeit north of Jerusalem. He studied art at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, where he was taught Abstract expressionism, a trend he didn't want to study, he wanted to paint more realistic things from life.[4] He developed a realist style of painting, depicting the daily life of those living and rooted in Palestine.
In 1987, together with other Palestinian artists like Vera Tamari, Tayseer Barakat, and Nabil Anani, Mansour founded "New Visions", a collective formed in response to the First Intifada (1987 - 1993).[5] This collective turned to earthworks and mixed media and assemblage using natural materials derived from the Palestinian environment in order to boycott Israeli art supplies in protest of the ongoing occupation.[6] Mansour used mud for the soil. His childhood memories of working with his grandmother when she was building beehives and ovens with mud inspired him. He was always around her, trying to help: ″So when I thought about material that I could use, mud was the first thing that came to my mind. After a while, once I started making figures, I realized that the mud also reflects the human fate with the cracks, people waiting to disappear, fall down and go away.″[4]
In 1988 he made a series of four paintings on destroyed Palestinian villages, the four villages being Yibna, Yalo, Imwas and Bayt Dajan.[7]
He is a co-author of the book Both Sides of Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Political Poster Art, published in 1998 by the Contemporary Art Museum with University of Washington Press.[8] Mansour is the author of two books on traditional Palestinian clothing and embroidery.
Mansour contributed extensively to the development of an infrastructure for the fine arts in Palestina. He taught at numerous cultural institutions and universities, including Al-Quds University. He was the head of the League of Palestinian Artists from 1986 to 1990. In 1994, Mansour co-founded al-Wasiti Art Center in East Jerusalem. He eas a member of the Founding Board of Directors of the International Academy of Art Palestine, established in 2004.
