Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Ismail Shammout was born in the occupied city of Lod on March 2, 1930. He is married and has three children. He studied primary school in Lod schools, then joined the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo, then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts (Academia di Belle Arti) in Rome between 1954 and 1956. He worked as an art teacher in Palestinian refugee schools in Khan Yunis, and worked with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Lebanon. He and his brother Jamil established an office for commercial illustration and book cover design, and worked in training art teachers in Beirut, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
He held his first exhibition at the Employees Club in Gaza City in 1953, where he presented sixty paintings, including his famous painting “Where to?” and “A Drink of Water.” This was considered the first visual arts exhibition in the history of Palestine for a Palestinian artist on Palestinian soil. Then he held the “Palestinian Refugee” exhibition in Cairo in 1954, and in his artwork he depicted the Nakba and the camp.
Shammout is considered the actual founder of the Palestinian visual arts movement. He participated in establishing the Department of Artistic Culture in the Department of Information and National Guidance in the PLO, and headed it between (1965-1984). He produced a large number of posters with a national and heritage character, and his works were displayed in a number of cities around the world, including: Gaza, Cairo, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus, Amman, Tripoli, Damascus, Kuwait, London, Belgrade, Sofia, Beijing, Vienna, and Washington. He established the “Dar Al-Karamah” Hall in Beirut, which hosted seasonal exhibitions for young Palestinian artists. He participated in establishing the General Union of Palestinian Visual Artists in 1969, and was chosen as its Secretary-General between (1969-1984). He participated in establishing the General Union of Arab Visual Artists in 1971, and was chosen as its Secretary-General between (1971-1984).
Shammout wrote a number of studies, including: The Young Artist (1957), Contemporary Arab Visual Art and Palestinian Art (1972), A Brief Illustrated History of Palestine (1972), History and Civilization (1977), Palestinian Popular Artistic Heritage (1978), Visual Art in Palestine (1989), and Murals of the Palestinian Biography and Journey (joint, 2000). He also directed a number of films based on his artistic experience, including: Memories and Fire (1973), The Urgent Call (1973), and On the Road to Palestine (1974). Noura Al-Sharif directed the film “Ismail,” which tells the story of Shammout’s asylum in Khan Yunis.
Shamout received a number of awards, including: “The Revolution Shield for Arts and Literature,” “The Jerusalem Medal for Culture, Arts and Literature,” “The Palestine Prize for Arts” from the Palestine Liberation Organization, and “The Creativity Award for Arab Visual Arts” from the Arab Thought Foundation.
Shammout suffered in his life; the occupation forced him and his family to leave the city of Lod on July 13, 1948. The family headed to the city of Ramallah, and his younger brother Tawfiq died of thirst before they reached the village of Ni'lin near Ramallah, until they settled in the Khan Yunis camp. He suffered from heart problems, and underwent three surgeries. He died on July 3, 2006, and was buried in Amman.
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