Ayman Baalbaki is one of the most prominent living Lebanese contemporary visual artists. He received his diploma in fine arts from the Lebanese Public University in Beirut in 1998 and then completed a year-long mandatory military service before moving to Paris in 2000, where he studied at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs from 2000 to 2002 and received his D.E.A from the Université Paris VIII in 2003.

In his body of work, the artist faces the past, tackling the war’s distressing events with cynicism, emphasizing the absurdity of war. Baalbaki’s oeuvre tackles themes such as loss, displacement, collective memory, and identity. The artist is known to depict large concrete bullet-riddled buildings in gradual collapse. Baalbaki’s buildings usually occupy the center of his painting appearing like emblems of disaster. Baalbaki has painted several civil war landmarks that are now covered with shrapnel and bullets such as the Burj al Murr Tower, the Holiday Inn Hotel, the Barakat Sniper Building and the Egg building. These paintings serve as a commemoration but also take on a personal and a political dimension.
He lightens the mood of his paintings with ornate backgrounds painted in alternating palettes of blue, green, yellow, or pink. Sometimes he fixes readymade floral fabrics to the canvas before he starts painting.