Saliby Khalil 

Btalloun (Liban), 1870-Beirut, 1928

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A Greek Orthodox from Btalloun, where he was born on 12th March 1870, Khalil Saliby was assassinated with his wife in front of his apartment in Kantari, after a quarrel with villagers about the distribution of a water source. He displayed the same strength of character in his painting as in his life, and pursued the demands of research and achievement to a high level.

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In 1881 Saliby enrolled with the English and American missionaries in Beirut. There he discovered a form of positivism and an early contact with the Anglo-Saxon world. The American University had established itself in Beirut while preaching progress, egalitarianism and a cultural Protestantism that was seen as a means of protest and breaking away from the Arabic-speaking, Islamic and the Francophone, Christiancultural societies.  The Anglo-Saxons perceived the latter as more dangerous, since it operated on the same terrain.

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For sure, the trajectory of Saliby’s career is not about the effects of manipulation by missionaries. Nor is it about presenting him as their victim. Rather, he was a man who found a justification for his radical nature with them, and also the tools to elaborate this justification.

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After his studies in Edinburgh (1890), the USA, London (1898) and Paris, Saliby settled in Beirut, where he took part in its cultural and intellectual life (1900-1928) and travelled – most notably to Egypt. He was at the centre of a typically Anglo-Saxon pictorial approach of constructing the canvas and choosing colors, which he applied in violently contrasting shades, even when painting in cold tones.

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The dispersal and destruction of a great deal of his work, papers, notebooks and library, prevents us from reconstructing his artistic career and the development of a personality for whom staging a revolt in the history of Lebanese painting has been crucial.