Aref El Rayess was born in Aley, Lebanon where he started painting at the tender age of eleven. From 1948 to 1957 the arist travelled between Senegal and Paris where he studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts, and the studios of Fernand Leger, Andre Lhôte, and La Grande Chaumière. In 1957 he returned to Lebanon and with the help of Roger Caron opened a studio and an atelier of Aubusson tapestries. In 1959 after an exhibiting at the Italian Cultural Centre he was offered a scholarship to study in Italy. He spent four years in Italy and in 1963 the Lebanese government commissioned him to produce two sculptures to represent Lebanon at the New York World Fair. El Rayess spent two years in the USA working alongside with Expressionist artists and intellectuals.

The nomadic artist, who toured Africa, North America, Europe, and the Gulf, acquired from his travels a unique style. He collaborated with Nicolas Nammar to establish the Institute of Fine Arts at the Lebanese University in 1963, teaching there from 1966 until 1980 after his return from the USA. El Rayess was not only a multidisciplinary artist, but he was also an astute thinker and keen observer. Inspired by Druze doctrine and its esoteric notions of mysticism, he believed in the interconnectivity of the universe, man, and time. Much like the work Espace, Homme Machine his works tackled themes of humanity, nature, and identity, denouncing injustice, materialism, and the superficiality of nationalism in the Global South.