Gazan artist Fathi Ghaben died on Sunday, February 25 from well being issues after Israeli authorities refused to provide him permission to depart the besieged area to entry medical remedy. He was famend for his oil work that paid homage to Palestinian tradition and immortalized the battle for liberation.
The self-taught painter was 77 years outdated and had been affected by chest and lung points that made it troublesome for him to breathe, in line with an announcement from the Palestinian Ministry of Tradition. Within the days main as much as his demise, the artist had been receiving remedy on the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in line with a report by the Palestine News and Information Agency (WAFA). Palestinian journalist Basel Khalaf additionally reported on X that the artist’s residence and studio, containing his works, had been destroyed by Israeli bombardments.
Ghaben was born in 1947 within the Palestinian village of Hiribya, a neighborhood that was forcibly depopulated and subsequently destroyed by Israeli forces through the 1948 Nakba. Throughout this era of mass displacement, his household sought refuge within the Jabalia refugee camp, positioned north of Gaza Metropolis. After leaving faculty within the sixth grade, Ghaben started instructing himself to color, notably preferring to make use of his fingers in lieu of brushes, in line with a 1987 interview republished by the Alserkal Arts Basis.
A pioneering determine within the post-Nakba visible arts neighborhood, Ghaben was celebrated for his colourful depictions of Palestinian people life, pure landscapes, and the resistance to the Israeli occupation.
In 1984, Israeli forces arrested and sentenced Ghaben to jail for six months, allegedly after the artist painted the Palestinian flag, according to the Palestinian Museum within the Occupied West Financial institution. The Israeli courtroom additionally confiscated seven of his artworks on the grounds that the work encouraged violence.
In a 2015 interview with Al-Monitor, Ghaben informed the information outlet that his oil portray “Id” (1982) particularly made him a goal of Israeli authorities.
“It represents a bunch of individuals protesting on the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, and in it, I anticipated the primary intifada,” the artist mentioned. “It was printed in coloured ink on posters that had been distributed within the West Financial institution and the Gaza Strip.”
Many Palestinian artists and cultural organizations have taken to social media to mourn the lack of Ghaben and bear in mind his legacy by way of his work.
“He discovered artwork by doing, and within the seventies and eighties of the final century, he grew to become probably the most important artists in Gaza by way of his expression in his work of nostalgia for Palestine earlier than the Nakba and his drawings about id and liberation,” Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour wrote in an Instagram post.