Draft:Martin Giesen

Martin Giesen is a German watercolour artist and former professor of art and architectural history, best known for his paintings documenting the impact of the civil war on the urban environment in Lebanon.

Born and schooled in Germany, he studied art history at Heidelberg University. After interning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and completing a PhD, Giesen entered into a career of university teaching.

His first academic appointment took him to Lebanon in 1973 just a few months before the country plunged into the Civil War. At the American University of Beirut he taught history of art and architecture. In 1981, Giesen began painting watercolours on-site in the largely destroyed inner city of Beirut. The impact of the war on infrastructure and lifestyle became the main focus and subject matter of his increasingly prodigious production of work. Close cooperation with Galerie Epreuve d’Artiste led to frequent exhibitions and critical acclaim. In an article in The Independent Robert Fisk noted that “[Giesen's] art captures the impact of development on the human environment. In descriptive watercolors, Giesen pictorially narrates locations of change: reconstruction in downtown Beirut, busy ports of the Gulf, the clash of tradition and modernity in Dubai, and decaying heritage in Cyprus.”

After teaching at universities in Saudi Arabia and Canada, Giesen returned to the Middle East in 1997. He was the founding Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Design at the American University of Sharjah until 2004. Giesen retired in 2020 and now lives in Cyprus.