Sliman Mansour
سليمان منصور
Painter
Palestinian painter whose images of porters, peasants, and olive trees made him a founding figure of contemporary Palestinian art.
Sliman Mansour was born in 1947 in Birzeit and studied fine art at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. A founding member of the League of Palestinian Artists and of the al-Wasiti Art Center in Jerusalem, he has spent five decades building the institutions of Palestinian visual art as well as his own body of work. His paintings return to a handful of enduring subjects — the land, the olive tree, the peasant, Jerusalem carried on an old man’s back.
His 1973 painting Jamal al-Mahamel (Camel of Hardship), showing a porter bowed beneath the weight of the Old City, became one of the most reproduced images in Palestinian art. During the first intifada, Mansour and fellow artists of the “New Visions” group boycotted Israeli art supplies and turned instead to local materials — mud, henna, natural dyes — making the boycott itself part of the work. He lives and works in Jerusalem, and his paintings are held in collections including Mathaf in Doha and the Barjeel Art Foundation.
Selected works
- Jamal al-Mahamel (Camel of Hardship) (1973)
- “New Visions” material experiments during the first intifada
- Recent series on exhaustion, anticipation, and loss
Sources
Further reading
An external biography or archive holding more on this life than the entry above.
Connected in the archive
12 connected records12 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
names this person — 3 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- What a People Made
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: End with the painter. Porters, peasants and olive trees — the images that taught contemporary Palestinian art what its subject was.
- The Watermelon
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: In 1980 the Israeli army shut down Gallery 79 in Ramallah — founded by the painter Issam Bader — which was showing work by Sliman Mansour, Bader and Nabil Anani that used the flag's colours.
- Vera Tamariفيرا تماري
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: She was a founding member of the League of Palestinian Artists in 1973 and, in 1987, of the New Visions group with Tayseer Barakat, Sliman Mansour, and Nabil Anani, whose members pledged to work only in locally found materials rather than buy Israeli art supplies.
named in this record — 1 record
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Jerusalemالقدس
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Sliman Mansour was born in 1947 in Birzeit and studied fine art at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.
on a related subject — 8 records
Filed near each other — the same Mandate district, or the same uncommon subject tags.
- Ismail Shammoutإسماعيل شموط
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "painting", "visual art".
- Kamal Boullataكمال بلاطة
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: Shared tags: "painting", "Jerusalem".
- Armenian Ceramics of Jerusalem
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "Jerusalem".
- The Abu Khdeir familyأبو خضير
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "Jerusalem".
- The Al-Alami familyالعلمي
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "Jerusalem".
- The Ansari familyالأنصاري
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Shared tag: "Jerusalem".
- and 2 more
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Sliman Mansour.” Figures, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/figures/sliman-mansour.- MLA
“Sliman Mansour.” Figures, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/figures/sliman-mansour. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-sliman-mansour, title = {Sliman Mansour}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/figures/sliman-mansour}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }