Irene Ghanem

Irene Ghanem (b. 1970, Beirut) is a Lebanese abstract expressionist painter whose work channels a vivid emotional landscape shaped by her upbringing during the Lebanese Civil War. Raised amid conflict, she developed an early fascination with color, gesture, and composition—elements that continue to define her energetic, intuitive practice.

Ghanem began her formal training in 1988 at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA), studying under leading Lebanese modernists including Yvette Achkar, Halim Jurdak, and Rima Amyouni. A turning point came in 1990, when she survived a severe injury from a rocket attack on the eve of her twentieth birthday. Following months of rehabilitation, Ghanem returned to her studies with renewed determination, deepening her engagement with abstraction as a channel for resilience and renewal.

In 1992, she moved to France, joining workshops at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and LAME, where she studied anatomy and developed her rapid, expressive drawing technique. She later relocated to Los Angeles, where encounters with American abstract expressionism—particularly Willem de Kooning—became a defining influence. Returning to Lebanon in 1997, Ghanem continued to expand her painterly language, infusing gesture, memory, and movement with a distinctly Mediterranean sensibility.

Her early exhibitions include UNESCO/ALBA (Beirut, 2002), Daraj el Fan (Beirut, 2003), and Le Créateur Français Gallery (France). After dedicating several years to raising her three children, Ghanem re-emerged with a mature body of work, opening her studio in 2014. A sold-out exhibition at the German Cultural Center (2015) marked her return to the public sphere, followed by presentations at ALBA (2017), Musée Paul Guiragossian (2019), Beirut Art Fair (2019), and Artscoops (2020–2021), among others. Ghanem's practice continues to draw from fragments of memory, travel, and lived experience—translating personal history into dynamic, layered abstractions that affirm her place within the lineage of modern and contemporary Lebanese painting.