Plastic artist Raafat Al-Shabani: The Syrian participation in the Picasso World Fair shows the level of our artists during the war

The Picasso Gallery of Plastic Art in the Spanish city of Malacca is an international phenomenon that annually receives wide participation by artists from around the world who collectively commemorate one of the most important artists that the twentieth century gave birth to, in his birthplace.

The exhibition this year is marked by a wide Syrian participation of 30 artists from Syria, after it was limited in previous sessions to individual participation, in addition to the participation of about a thousand artists from around the world.

The curator of the exhibition on the Syrian side, the plastic artist, Rafat Al-Shabani, stated  that the exhibition will be held in a realistic way for Spanish artists and in a virtual way for artists from the rest of the world due to the conditions imposed by the Corona pandemic.

Al-Shabani said that the Syrian artists selected from all Syrian governorates presented works inspired by Picasso’s style and his artistic experience.

Al-Shabani considered the exhibition a platform for artistic creativity where Arab and European plastic artists meet and exchange artistic experiences.

Al-Shabani said that the goal of the Syrian participation is to raise the name of the country in international cultural forums and to show the development of the Syrian plastic artist  during the years of war.

The artist Al-Shabani participates in the Picasso exhibition with a painting entitled “the Future” on the material of acrylic, which reflects his visual and intellectual vision through symbols, lines and colors, a mixture of joy and sadness, expressing his psychological state and the time period in which he painted his painting.

Al-Shabani has an artistic career of nearly forty years, in which he painted for himself an artistic line of his own, and the colors he chooses in his paintings are distinguished.

It is noteworthy that the plastic artist, Raafat Al-Shabani, was born in Damascus in 1974 and he is the director of the Nada Foundation for Fine Arts and the director of the Nada Children Club.

O. al-Mohammad