Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Karim Dabbah (Abu Ashraf; April 21, 1937 - February 9, 2021) is a Palestinian plastic artist, considered one of the pillars of plastic art in Palestine. Karim worked as a lecturer for plastic arts in a number of Palestinian universities, and he also founded the Naji Al-Ali Art Association in 1988.
his life
Karim Qustandi Dabbah was born in the Qatamon neighborhood, west of Jerusalem, on April 21, 1937 AD. In 1944, his father decided to move from the Qatamon neighborhood to Ramallah. Karim studied at Ramallah Elementary School, then moved in the early 1950s to the National College to complete His preparatory studies, after the closure of schools due to the Nakba.
He was interested in politics. He was arrested at the beginning of his political career by the Badia units of the Jordanian army, where he was placed in Al-Jafr prison, where he met in prison with a number of members of the Communist Party, including Fouad Nassar, the party's secretary-general. Karim was released in 1957, when the Jordanian king ordered the release of all secondary students detained in Al-Jafr and the rest of Jordan's prisons, then he returned to Ramallah. He joined the Jordanian Communist Party, and became a leader in the Palestinian Communist Party since its re-establishment in 1982.
He traveled to Kuwait in the early sixties of the twentieth century, and worked in the oil field, before he obtained a Soviet mission to study the art of copper forging and its artwork. Therefore, he left Kuwait in 1968 and went directly to Moscow State University, where he studied the Russian language, then completed five years specializing in plastic arts, learning the arts of oil painting, sculpture and plastic art prints, and obtained a master’s degree in handicrafts and ceramics.
He returned to Palestine in 1973 and enrolled as a lecturer in plastic arts at An-Najah National College, then was elected a member of the administrative board of the Plastic Artists Association in 1974. He later left the association and formed the Naji Al-Ali Arts Association in 1988. He also worked as a lecturer for plastic arts at Birzeit University, and then founded a department Arts at Al-Quds University in 2010. After that, he worked for two years at Al-Quds Open University, then decided to retire in 2014 and devote himself to plastic art and participate in group exhibitions.
Karim participated in a number of personal and group art exhibitions, the most prominent of which was the Return and Beginnings of 2014 exhibition in the city of Ramallah, during which he displayed 27 paintings, the most prominent of which was a poster of the young martyr Muhammad Abu Khudair, as well as posters simulating the prisoners’ hunger strike and the standing of our people against the arrogance of the Israeli occupation. .
his death
He died in Ramallah on February 9, 2021 AD, corresponding to Jumada II 1442 AH, at the age of 84. Buried on February 10, 2021 in the New Ramallah Cemetery. The Palestinian Ministry of Culture mourned him in a statement, “Palestine has lost one of the most prominent figures and pillars of plastic art and its most important great artists who enriched the national culture and Palestinian art.” It added that Karim Dabbah participated “in several personal and collective art exhibitions that simulate the killing and destruction of Palestinians by the occupation attacks.” And arrest.”
The third and seventh funerals were held for him on February 12, 2021, in the Greek Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, in Ramallah.
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Achievements and Awards
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