User:Coffeeandcrumbs/Sliman Mansour

Sliman Anis Mansour (also Suleiman or Suliman, سليمان منصور, born 27 July 1947) is a Palestinian painter, sculptor, and cartoonist.

Early life and education
Sliman Anis Mansour was born on 27 July 1947, in Birzeit, Palestine, a town near Ramallah. He is the fourth of six children. Like his paternal grandfather, Jerris (George), Mansour's father, Anis, was educated in Germany but was expelled from Nazi Germany in the 1930s before his graduation and briefly worked for the police in Jerusalem under British control.

Mansour's father died of cancer in 1951 when Mansour was four years old. The family moved to Jerusalem and Mansour was later sent to Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, to attend the Evangelical Lutheran boarding school to receive a German education like his father and grandfather. At the time, the West Bank was under Jordanian control. He later said of his early education, "they taught us as children that we are Jordanian: The Jordanian flag is our flag, Jordanian King Hussein is our king. It was brainwashing."

Mansour's mother made clothing to support her children. His maternal grandfather, Boulus (Paul) Khouri, was a priest of the Greek Orthodox Church at Birzeit.

Artistic career and work
Mansour is considered an important figure among contemporary Palestinian artists. Mansour is considered an artist of the intifada whose work gave visual expression to the cultural concept of sumud. Palestinian artist and scholar Samia Halaby has identified Mansour as part of the Liberation Art Movement and cites his important work as an artist and cultural practitioner before and after the Intifada. During the Intifada, Mansour was part of the "New Visions" group of Palestinian artists that included Nabil Anani, Tayseer Barakat, and Vera Tamari. This collective turned to earthworks and mixed media and assemblage using materials derived from the Palestinian environment in order to boycott Israeli art supplies in protest of the ongoing occupation. In 1988, he made a series of four paintings on destroyed Palestinian villages, the four villages being Yibna, Yalo, Imwas and Bayt Dajan.

He is a co-author of Both Sides of Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Political Poster Art, published in 1998 by the Contemporary Art Museum with University of Washington Press.

In November 1994, Mansour, along with Anani, Barakat and Tamari, founded in East Jerusalem the Al-Wasiti Art Centre, named after Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, a 13th-century painter from Wasit in southern Iraq.