Born in 1947 in Birzeit, Palestine, Sliman Mansour studied Fine Art at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem. Mansour is a key founder of the contemporary Palestinian art movement, and he became the head of the League of Palestinian Artists in the 1980s. Mansour played a key role in the establishment of the International Academy of Art Palestine, as well as the Al-Wasti Art Center in East Jerusalem in the 1990s.
He is known for his 1973 work Camel of Hardship, which depicts an old porter carrying Jerusalem on his back. Mansour has tailored his comprehensive portfolio around the Palestinian struggle, portraying peasants and women in traditional dress in his early work as well as symbols for Palestinian resistance. In 1989, during the first Intifada, Mansour and other artists in the “New Visions” art collective boycotted Israeli art supplies, producing artworks by using local materials. Mansour used mud, straw and henna in his work for over a decade. More recently, Mansour focused on drawing the Palestinian landscape using the olive tree as a symbol for the land.
Mansour’s work can be found in international private and public collections, including the Guggenheim Museum (Abu Dhabi, UAE), Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha, Qatar), Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris, France), Jordan National Museum (Amman, Jordan), Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah, UAE), Darat Al Funun (Amman, Jordan), Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation (Abu Dhabi, UAE), Dar El-Nimer (Beirut, Lebanon), and The Palestinian Museum (Birzeit, Palestine).