Ehab Zein Eddine

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Ehab Zein Eddine belongs to a generation of Syrian artists whose work engages directly with the human consequences of war through a refined visual language that merges realism with symbolism. Educated at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus, where he later pursued postgraduate studies and lectured, Zein Eddine developed a practice grounded in painting yet expanded towards mixed-media compositions. When his master’s studies were interrupted by the conflict, he established his own studio in Sweida, where he continues to paint and teach independently. His oeuvre is distinguished by a recurring focus on childhood as a locus of both fragility and endurance. Children, often portrayed frontally with penetrating, introspective gazes, inhabit desolate or fragmented spaces in which traces of devastation coexist with chromatic accents of hope. The tension between the expressive faces and the distressed environments conveys a sustained reflection on memory, trauma, and resilience. Zein Eddine frequently incorporates fragments of newspaper and layered textures into his backgrounds, constructing a visual palimpsest in which media imagery and personal recollection intertwine to evoke the historical dimension of his subject matter. Exhibited in Syria and Lebanon and represented in private collections throughout Europe and North America, his paintings constitute measured meditations on displacement and survival. They reveal an artist concerned less with narrative than with the ethical responsibility of representation, translating collective experience into a restrained yet deeply affecting visual idiom.