Palestinian painter, sculptor and cultural organizer Sliman Mansour died Monday at Al-Makassed Hospital in Jerusalem at the age of 79 following an undisclosed illness, his family announced. For more than five decades, Mansour created art focused on Palestinian identity, displacement, memory and the connection between people and their land.
Mansour was born in Birzeit, near Ramallah, in 1947 and studied at Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. His figurative artworks often featured farmers, women wearing traditional embroidered clothing, olive trees, villages and scenes of Jerusalem.
One of his most famous works was the 1973 painting commonly known as Camel of Hardships or Camel of Burdens. The painting shows an elderly porter carrying Jerusalem in a bundle on his back. The artwork was widely reproduced on posters and postcards, making it one of the best-known works of modern Palestinian art.
Mansour was a founding member of the League of Palestinian Artists and led the organization during the 1980s. During the First Intifada, he joined artists Vera Tamari, Tayseer Barakat and Nabil Anani to establish the New Visions collective.
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The group stopped using Israeli-made art supplies and began working with local materials such as mud, henna, straw, leather and wood. Their work was closely connected to the landscape and environment they portrayed.
Mansour’s artworks made with mud were designed to crack and change over time, reflecting themes of endurance, fragility and loss.
His work was exhibited internationally and became part of art collections across the Arab world and other regions. He also taught at Palestinian universities, created illustrations and political cartoons for publications, and wrote about Palestinian clothing and embroidery.
