Munira Nusseibeh Toukan was born in Palestine in 1943. Educated in Jerusalem at a French Roman Catholic school, Nusseibeh was initially interested in classical music, particularly the piano which she later abandoned to pursue painting. The French government offered her a scholarship at Charpentier’s art school, Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse. The Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho had founded the school in 1904, and it was later acquired by the Charpentier family in 1957. Nusseibeh lived in Paris between 1963 and 1965, studying first at the Grande Chaumière and later at the École des Beaux-Arts, living in student accommodation in the Cité universitaire. In June 1965, Nusseibeh participated in her first exhibition; a group show with three other young artists at the Gallery of ​​the Cité Internationale in Montparnasse. From Paris Nusseibeh moved to London to join her father, the Jordanian Ambassador Anwar Nusseibeh, who had been previously Minister of Defence in Amman. Later, the artist relocated to New York, where she graduated from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing. In this realm, her teachers include Dr Deepak Chopra, Dr Robert Jaffe and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Nusseibeh has exhibited widely around the globe including the Upper Grosvenor Gallery (London), Islamic Festival: Mathaf Gallery (London), Gallery Bernard Letu (Geneva), Gallery Arta (Geneva), Gallery Rhoda Sande (New York), French Cultural Centre (Abu Dhabi), Barbara Brathon Gallery (New York) and Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts (Amman). Similarly, her work belongs to several public and private collections including the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts and Barjeel Foundation (Sharjah).

The artist works both in painting and sculpture, having experimented in abstraction and more expressive portraiture. Nusseibeh’s oeuvre is characterised by her ability to express complicated human emotions in her fragile, emotive portraits painted in dark hues. Her portraits are unapologetically mysterious, yet firm in their ability to communicate their sternest.

Featured image: ‘Four Arabian Women’ (1980).
All artworks courtesy of the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts.