Artist · Historian · Educator
Beirut · Paris · Rome
Bio
Bassam Anouti is a Beirut-born multidisciplinary artist, art historian, and educator with a remarkably diverse academic foundation. He pursued higher education across clinical psychology, French literature, art history, fine arts, and design at the Lebanese University and later at Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He earned an M.Phil. from the Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) and trained in a special art program at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
A polyglot who lives between Beirut, Paris, and Rome, Anouti belongs to hybrid cultures, bridging East and West. He grew up in the chaos of the Lebanese Civil War and therefore projects a cerebral and symbolic pictorial work, in opposition to the socio-political and human disorder he experienced.
His blend of advanced humanities education and hands-on teaching experience has made Anouti an artist-intellectual whose work is informed by deep historical and cultural knowledge. He has held teaching positions at AUST, Espace Fann, and currently serves as instructor at Majal Design School.
Anouti's artistic practices stand at the intersection of pictorial traditions and contemporary practices, combining photography, digital painting and traditional mixed-media techniques.
Philosophy
Having come of age during the Lebanese Civil War, Anouti witnessed chaos and disorder firsthand. His response has been to create art that is cérébrale, ordonnée et réfléchie — cerebral, ordered, and reflective — a direct counter-narrative to the socio-political and human disorder he lived through.
Drawing on principles of psychology, his art-making functions as an intellectual exercise: by imposing meticulous structure, symmetry, and thoughtfulness, he symbolically mends the fractures of a chaotic world. His visual compositions are highly deliberate and concept-driven, a direct inverse of the randomness of war-torn reality.
History and anthropology underlie his creative process. He conducts extensive research as a socle (foundation) for his artwork, weaving ancient lore and legend into contemporary digital form. His art reflects a dialogue between Eastern and Western iconography — combining Babylonian or Levantine mythologies with European art techniques, juxtaposing the ancient with the modern.
In his works, Anouti assumes that his target audience possesses artistic and literary appreciation, and boasts a historical understanding of Eastern and Western cultures, as well as their symbolism.
Method
Each work begins with extensive anthropological and historical research into the chosen iconic figure — their mythology, cultural context, and symbolic resonance across civilizations.
The chosen figures are then staged through photography, where models from the artist's entourage pose in carefully assembled costumes. Folk and historical costumes, fabrics, and colors are all elements chosen for their universal symbolism. Photographs are taken in both Lebanon and France.
These photographs become the foundation for digital painting and compositing using multiple graphics software. The results are then printed as a single artwork using ultraviolet light before being reworked using traditional fine art techniques by the artist.
Anouti works across a range of digital and traditional tools: Adobe Photoshop, Procreate, ArtStudio, and Adobe Illustrator on iPad form the core of his digital practice. These are complemented by traditional painting techniques — acrylic, ink, and gold leaf — applied in the final stages of each piece.
The resulting works are truly mixed-media in the broadest sense: photographic realism alongside stylized digital illustration, typographic and geometric design motifs, with colors, forms, and layouts carefully balanced with a graphic designer's eye for composition.
There is a noticeable influence of pop art and collage — cut-out figures of historical personas re-contextualized in new settings — alongside the visual languages of antiquity: ancient Mesopotamian symbols, classical sculptures, and calligraphic scripts subtly embedded in digital canvases.
The Series
Iconic I is the first chapter of a large fresque featuring legendary, folkloric, mythical and historical iconic characters who have left a mark in history and in the collective imagination.
The themes of the works are woven around unhealthy passions, transgressed taboos, rape, murder, incest, regicide, matricide, infanticide, fratricide and parricide. The characters are drawn from history, mythology, folklore and legends. These figures are the dark bent of human nature in all its glorious malevolence. The artist tried to capture the magnificence of monstrosity, a XXth-XXIst century trend where transgressive figures that are beyond good and evil in the nietzschean sense, are glamorized, looked upon and put on a pedestal.
This fresco transcends time and space, hence their anachronistic appearance, which refers to the universality of the figure. Indeed these icons no longer belong to a specific culture or space-time, but they belong to all civilizations as disparate as they are, being the reflection of a true humanity and faithful to its most archaic, most vile impulses, and the truest ones. The boundaries between evil and good disappear in favor of a life that becomes a total work of art.
A trend of the second half of the XXth century is the reversal of traditional values of good and evil in western cultures. Good is viewed as irrelevant value in modern times and Evil becomes the norm of new generations putting it on a pedestal and glamorising it.
The result of in-depth research in mythology, history, politics, folklore, literature and anthropology, this series was created from photographs taken in Lebanon and France. The process begins with photography of the personnages. Folk and historical costumes, fabrics and colors are all elements chosen for their universal symbolism. These photographs are then the base of digital painting using several graphics and compositing softwares.
The results are then printed as a single artwork using ultraviolet light before being reworked using traditional fine art techniques by the artist.
Works
Selected
Centre Paris Anim' Mercœur, Paris
Solo exhibition as part of a cultural festival celebrating Lebanese heritage. Featured 71 small mixed-media paintings (acrylic, ink, and gold leaf) blending pop art and contemporary styles. The works depicted iconic figures from 1980s Lebanon — celebrities, political figures, and even manga characters — all set against backdrops of Islamic and Christian art motifs, bridging generational gaps through art. Covered by L'Orient-Le Jour.
International Online Group Exhibition
Digital artworks responding to lines of a poem with visual interpretations, exhibited alongside artists worldwide. Pieces included "I Am an Eagle Playing with the Wind" and "I Am a Deer Standing Away in the Dusk" — poetic, metaphor-driven digital works translating words into imagery.
Series — Mixed media on UV print
The first chapter of a large fresque featuring 17 works across History, Mythology, Ancien Testament, and Folklore. Legendary, folkloric, mythical and historical iconic characters staged through photography, digital painting, and traditional fine art techniques.
Series — Digital & Mixed Media
A series incorporating mythological creatures and symbols, continuing the artist's exploration of ancient lore and legend through contemporary digital techniques.
Background
Education
Art History, Fine Arts & Design
Research
MPhil — Art History
Training
Special Program in Art
Teaching
Instructor — Art & Design
Teaching
American University of Science & Technology
Teaching
Art Centre, Beirut