Marwan Chamaa

Marwan Chamaa is a painter, designer, and storyteller. His Middle Eastern Neo Pop-Art art is a mélange of fiction, reality, and vanity. Chamaa's art spans over three decades of thematic interpretations of the world around him. It is fundamentally his view of the world as he sees it with an ironic and sometimes sarcastic undertone. 

Born in Beirut - Lebanon, raised in Munich - Germany, and having lived in the USA for more than a decade, exposed him to different cultures and formed him into the eclectic versatile artist he is today. In the early to mid 90s, when downtown Beirut was undergoing a massive makeover, Marwan's paintings took on old Beirut: Beirut of the 50s and 60s. His paintings marveled at the vibrancy of the old souks, the details brought out in his signature use of bold colors. 

Although Marwan was residing in the USA at the time, he still pursued his project and made use of old pictures and postcards, turning them into homage to the city under reconstruction. Towards the end of the 90s and the turn of the century, so-to-speak, Marwan Chamaa painted New York City. Living in the eclectic and dynamic East Village in New York City, which was the mecca for artists, musicians, writers, and poets, exposed Marwan to Latin beats, Indian kitsch, Japanese punk, and Ukrainian flavors. 

The streets of Manhattan were interpreted in a vibrant style with large expressive brushwork and primary colors, all representative of the world as seen by Marwan Chamaa. Throughout his career, his surroundings manifested themselves in his work. His physical world is his muse. He would spend hours on end in Times Square just absorbing the electronic billboards, fascinated by their staggering overwhelming hypnotic effect on his creativity.