Aref Rayess

Who is Aref Rayess?

'’’Aref El Rayess was a Lebanese painter. Born in Aley, Mount Lebanon, Aref El Rayess started his career as a self-taught artist exhibiting for the first time in 1948. He lived in Africa for many years during which he traveled between Senegal and Paris. In Paris, he joined the studios of Fernand Léger, André Lhote, Marcelle Marso and Ossip Zadkine while studying at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In 1957, he returned to Lebanon, but left again for Florence in 1959 with a scholarship from the Italian government. From 1960 to 1963, he lived in Rome where he went on studying and exhibiting. In 1963, he returned to Lebanon.

Rayess participated in many group shows including the biennales of São Paulo and Bagdad; the Unesco exhibition in Montreal; the Mall Galleries, London and the Salons of the Sursock Museum, Beirut. He has held more than fifteen one-man shows in Lebanon.

Internationally, his Individual exhibitions include: the Poliani Gallery, Rome; Numero Gallery, Florence; D'Arcy Gallery, New York; Excelsior Gallery, Mexico; the Rodin Museum, Paris; a retrospective of his works, 1957-1968, at the National Museum of Damascus; Ornina Gallery, Damascus, Gallery Rasim, Algeria and in Venezuela.