Artist : ADONIS
Venue : Hunar Gallery
Date : 10/11/2008

Hunar Gallery is hosting the first art exhibition in the Gulf by well known Syrian Poet and artist ADONIS. His art works are Collage using Paper. The exhibition runs from 10th November to 30th December 2008.

Ali Ahmed Said was born in the village of Al Qassabin in Syria, in 1930, to a family of farmers, the oldest of six children. At the age of nineteen, he adopted the name Adonis after the Greek god of fertility, When he was fourteen, Adonis read a poem to the president of Syria who was visiting a nearby town. The impressed president offered to grant a request, to which the young Adonis responded that he wanted to attend school. The president quickly made arrangements for Adonis to attend a French-run high school, after which he studied philosophy at Damascus University. In 1956, after a year-long imprisonment for political activities, Adonis fled Syria for Beirut, Lebanon. He joined a vibrant community of artists, writers, and exiles in Beirut, and co-founded and edited Sh'ir, and later Muwaqaf, both progressive journals of poetry and politics. He studied at St. Joseph University in Beirut and obtained his Doctorat d'Etat in 1973.

Considered one of the Arab world's greatest living poets, Adonis is the author of numerous collections, including Mihyar of Damascus (BOA Editions, 2008), A Time Between Ashes and Roses (Syracuse University Press, 2004); If Only the Sea Could Sleep (2003); The Pages of Day and Night (2001) .