Lebanon’s Art World in Catastrophic Times: Visual Arts in the 1980s and Art History Now
Nadia von Maltzahn will give a talk at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz in the frame of its research project Art Histories / Catastrophes / (Heritage) / Ecologies [AC(H)E].
AC(H)E Matinée with Nadia von Maltzahn:
Lebanon’s Art World in Catastrophic Times: Visual Arts in the 1980s and Art History Now
28 April 2026, 11:00
This event will take place in person in Florence at Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai.
Please register via Zoom to participate online

In an interview in the Lebanese newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour in January 1982, Lebanese artist Amine El Bacha said that “to paint is to put the war in brackets”. The 1980s in Lebanon were dominated by war, destruction, and displacement, but they were also a time of continuities and new beginnings. In this talk, I will give insights into Lebanon’s visual arts in the 1980s in the middle of Lebanon’s civil war (1975-1990). By interrelating context and artistic production, the nuances of how artists and institutions navigated this troubled decade will be analysed. One concern is also to rethink the conventional periodization of Lebanon’s history into, first, a golden—or “gilded”—age between the 1950s and mid-1970s, then a war period, and finally a postwar period starting in the 1990s. Whereas the so-called postwar generation of artists engaged extensively with the aftermath and memory of the war, in the midst of conflict artists applied different approaches to their engagement with what was happening around them. I will finish the talk by reflecting on what it means to write and document Lebanon’s art history in the catastrophic times of today, where we find ourselves in war again, following other recent catastrophes such as Lebanon’s severe and ongoing financial crisis and Beirut’s port explosion.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Nadia von Maltzahn (April 23, 2026). Lebanon’s Art World in Catastrophic Times: Visual Arts in the 1980s and Art History Now. LAWHA Lebanon's Art World at Home and Abroad. Retrieved June 18, 2026 from https://lawha.hypotheses.org/2756
