Kamal Boullata is a graduate of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome (1961-65) and the Corcoran Art Museum School in Washington, DC (1968-71).
In 1993 and 1994 he received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship to conduct field research on Islamic art in Morocco and Spain. In 2001 Ford Foundation offered him a grant to research Post-Byzantine painting in Palestine. The author of four books on Palestinian art, he has edited a number of books ranging in subjects from modern poetry to contemporary art and culture. In 2012-13, he was elected as a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin.
Boullata’s work is found in private and public collections including the British Museum, London; Patronato de la Alhambra Islamic Museum, Granada; Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; New York Public Library, New York; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Bibliothèque Louis Notari, Monaco and Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.
Over the last four decades he lived in the USA (1968-1992), Morocco (1993-1996), and France (1997-20012). He presently lives in Berlin.
“By finding inspiration in art that comes down to us from other times - as in the case of Byzantine iconography and Islamic art, both of which I grew up with – I sought through my painting to transform the reading of the beautiful in these affiliated traditions and render it in relation to our time. That is how I invite viewers ‘to return to a present where [they] have never been’.”
Kamal Boullata
