Kamal Boullata was born in Jerusalem in 1942 and moved to Rome in the 1960s to study at the Academia di Belle Arti. He subsequently obtained his MFA from the Cororan School of Art in Washington DC and, thanks to two research grants, was able to travel and live in Morocco and France. During the last decade of his life, the artist lived in Berlin, where he was a fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies.
Boullata was not only a painter, but an academic and writer, contributing to our knowledge and understanding of Palestinian art history as well as to the visual arts. His love of music has served as an inspiration in his works as well as his exploration of history, exile, and colour. In the present work, one can see the expression of the artist’s multiple layers of creativity, harmonious like the Byzantine mosaics and Islamic geometry of Jerusalem’s buildings and modern as the American colour field artists of the 1950s that inspired him.
“Between one brushstroke and another, the process of painting always felt like listening to a musical composition for the first time. In anticipation of hearing an upcoming note, the listener is usually delightfully surprised by the composer’s turn, just as I am by the accidental turn of a brushstroke amidst solid angular forms.”
Boullata’s works are found in global institutions, including the British Museum, London; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; the New York Public Library, New York; the Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman; the Jordan National Gallery, Amman; Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah and Mathaf, the Museum of Modern Arab Art, Doha amongst also important private collections. Some of his notable publications include Palestinian Art: From 1850 to the Present (2009) and Between Exits: Paintings by Hani Zurob (2012) (an artist also featured in this sale; see lot 57).