The art exhibition "Limited Edition" offers the public a chance to view copies of works by Palestinian visual artist Suleiman Mansour, spanning fifty years and bearing his signature. Visitors to the exhibition can explore 21 of his paintings, which prominently feature women, the land, and various themes of the Palestinian cause that have helped elevate his work to international recognition. Mansour, 76, a long-time artist and significant contributor to Palestinian art over the decades, stated to Reuters during the opening of his exhibition at Zawyeh Gallery today, Saturday, that the exhibition is "a retrospective of a long history of art."
Suleiman Mansour was born in 1947 in Birzeit near Ramallah and is considered one of the leading Palestinian artists and one of the founders of the Palestinian art movement. He is famous for numerous artworks recognized globally. His last solo exhibition was held in 2011. Palestinian national issues are prominent in most of his works, whether through the embroidered dress of Palestinian women, olive and orange trees, or the sea and religious sites, including Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Mansour noted that during the period his generation of artists lived, the Palestinian cause was fundamental to their artistic work, which helped them gain recognition locally, regionally, and internationally. The organizers of the exhibition chose to showcase a collection of 21 signed limited edition prints of Mansour's iconic works produced over more than half a century.
Youssef Hussein, the director of Zawyeh Gallery in Ramallah, stated, "We selected a series of Mansour's works... from the 1970s to the present." Among the displayed pieces are works produced in the early stages of Mansour's artistic career in the 1970s, such as "The Camel of Loads" (1974) and a painting titled "Jerusalem" (1978), featuring a young woman in traditional Palestinian dress carrying the same load as an elderly man in "The Camel of Loads" but with a strong, upright posture.
One painting depicts a woman holding a straw plate filled with pomegranates, another shows two women transporting oranges from the field, and a third features a woman embracing a tree that has shed its leaves in a real and perhaps metaphorical winter. In another artwork, a woman holds a tree that is half olive and half orange, while a man and a woman are depicted harvesting olives together. All the women in Mansour's works wear embroidered Palestinian dresses, varying in design, sometimes fully embroidered and at other times only having minimal embroidery along the edges.
A statement from the exhibition notes, "In a painting, a woman holds a Palestinian flag on an exaggeratedly tall pole, walking determinedly in a barren desert, while a majestic funeral procession led by large crowds is depicted in a painting titled 'Rituals under Occupation' (1989), carrying the coffin of a martyr covered with the Palestinian flag, resembling a large cross that reminds us of Christ's crucifixion."
The exhibition will continue until November.
