Saliba Douaihy, one of Lebanon’s twentieth century masters, was born in the picturesque town of Ehden, North of Lebanon. Encouraged to develop his talent at an early age, Douaihy studied under the tutelage of prolific classical painter Habib Srour.
Douaihy was an international artist, who learned and worked in cosmopolitain cities such as New York and Paris, thanks to a grant from the Lebanese Government. During his time in New York, Douaihy lived in a studio above a Maronite Church, it was then that his practice developed most. He became part of the school of New York, meeting and befriending Post-War masters such as Mark Rothko, Hans Hoffman, Ad Reinhardt and many more.
Douaihy started deconstructing the architectural forms of landscapes and representing his surroundings in a cubist-like style. Breaking away from traditional Lebanese painting, he began to explore into the world of simplification. He often used primary colors such as blues, reds, and yellows and created simple shapes to represent mountains, valleys, villages, buildings, and other landscapes. After taking a course on aesthetics, he became infatuated with the writings of Emmanuel Kant, aspiring to reach the “sublime” through a more formalist abstract method. After having studied Kant and throughout the 1960’s the paintings he produced were a result of the artists search for the ultimate simplification of both form and color.

Throughout his lifespan, Douaihy, much like Picasso, was able to completely change his body of work from strictly academic to a more Modern, abstract one. Saliba Douaihy spent time between London and Paris before passing away in 1994 in New York. Since the mid-1960s, Douaihy's paintings have been exhibited in institutions including the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and are featured in public and private collections around the world including Mathaf in Doha.