Institute of Arab and Islamic Art Unveils Powerful Nabil Kanso Exhibition, “Endless Night”

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In a powerful tribute to an artist whose life was dedicated to bearing witness, the Institute of Arab and Islamic Art presents “Endless Night,” the first major institutional solo exhibition of the late Lebanese-American painter Nabil Kanso (1940-2019) in New York. From April 30 to August 25, 2024, this exhibition unravels the profound themes of war, suffering and human endurance that defined Kanso’s visceral body of work.

Born in 1940 in war-torn Beirut, Kanso’s artistic vision was indelibly shaped by the Arab-Israeli conflict that overshadowed his youth. After immigrating to the United States amid the social upheavals of the 1960s, his paintings began channeling a universality of anguish, giving form to the collective trauma of violence and oppression around the globe. Rendered on large, unstretched canvases, Kanso’s haunting human figures emerge disfigured and decomposing, capturing raw emotions that transcend any single historic atrocity.

While Kanso’s works do not depict specific events, they serve as powerful emotional responses, blending neo-expressionist style with primordial, mythic imagery. His visual language pulls from both the contemporary and the classical to weave a breathtakingly potent narrative of the human condition in extremis.

A centerpiece is the rarely exhibited “Leaves from the Theater of War” (1980-1992), 242 ink drawings of darkly comic, hallucinatory scenes inspired by Kanso’s 1982 visit to Lebanon during the Siege of Beirut and Sabra and Shatila massacres. Recalling Goya’s “Disasters of War” etchings, these searing vignettes indict the political elite propagating endless cycles of violence.

At its core, Kanso’s devotion to protest art reminds us that resistance, however expressed, remains an emblem of unity and hope amid division, destruction and terror. From his pioneering 1970s exhibitions to his globetrotting ’80s “Journey of Art for Peace” project, Kanso’s uncompromising vision continues to resonate as both a vivid chronicle of suffering and a quest for human redemption.

As this exhibition provokes new audiences to ponder our inextricable bonds amid seismic conflicts, Kanso’s enduring power emerges: to awaken the universal humanitarian conscience one gripping, haunting image at a time.