The interview was conducted and prepared by Hanna Ibrahim, published in Al Ittihad newspaper on 24 February 1978
A people’s artist, in every sense of the word. He knew the bitterness of displacement and refuge, suffered what his people suffered, and struggled with his brush just as poets struggled with their verses. His communist commitment gave him clarity of vision, and so he dedicated his brush and talent to serving the people.
When the painter Abed Abdi celebrated his thirty-sixth birthday on the sixteenth of this month, it did not occur to him that the editorial board of Al-Ittihad would host him only days later as the third “Guest of the Month.” Perhaps he assumed that such a guest must be someone who had already surpassed the age of sixty or eighty, and who had endured long and difficult stages of struggle.
We, of course, do not imitate magazines like Al-Maw’id or others that delve into the private lives of artists, exploring details that matter little or not at all to the public. Rather, we are concerned with what is shared between the lives and work of our guests and the broader life of the people.
We wish to shed light on the features of our guest’s life story, which is in fact part of the broader story of the people’s struggle. And let this also be a form of honoring our guest—for who said it is forbidden to honor a person in his own homeland, especially when we cannot expect other newspapers to do so?
Abed Abdi arrived more than half an hour late to our appointment. But his lateness was not the kind born of self-importance. It was due to his intense preoccupation with the memorial for the martyrs of Land Day, on which he is working tirelessly to complete on schedule. Anyone who visits him at the foundry where he is molding that monumental work would readily excuse him.
He apologized for being late, drying his hands, and we sat to talk over a cup of coffee.
Sources of Commitment
It is almost unnecessary to repeat that Abed Abdi is a committed artist—everyone who knows of him or has seen his works knows this. But how he became such an artist is a matter of circumstances and reasons he explained as follows:
“My commitment did not come by chance. My social background certainly played a role in shaping my direction. I was born in Haifa on 16 February 1942 to a working-class family. No living member of the family recalls any ancestral home other than Haifa. My grandfather, on my father’s side, was born there. We do not know more than that—we have no family tree like aristocratic families do!
He was a fisherman. Fishing was one of the two trades our family practiced. The second was stone-carving. I was influenced by both, and grew up loving the sea and drawing.My father worked in fishing from a young age. During the First World War he was fortunate—not sent to the front, but instead employed as a carriage driver for the Ottoman qa’im maqam. His work took him to many places, and he often told his children stories from those times.
My mother was from the village of Kafr Lam. Her uncle was ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Hajj, who served as mayor of Haifa for a period in the 1930s.
After the First World War, my father changed professions and opened a stable for horses and carts on Iraq Street. But with industrial development and the rise of automobiles under the British Mandate, the trade declined, and he liquidated the business in the early 1950s.
Abdi’s family was not particularly large—he had one brother and three sisters, one of whom remains a refugee in Syria.
Education and Early Work
Q: It is known that you studied in the German Democratic Republic. Can you tell us something about your life before traveling—how your studies and work began?
A:
“I completed my elementary education at the Akhawat School in Haifa. I was an ordinary student, drawn to certain subjects more than others. I loved composition and writing.
I remember once writing the typical school essay answering the question, ‘Which profession will you choose?’ I imagined myself as a great painter, famous enough to win the Nobel Prize—unaware that the Nobel is not awarded to painters! In my childish imagination I envisioned myself distributing the entire prize money among gifted poor students.
“But my family’s financial situation did not allow me to continue secondary or university education. I had to work for my living. I became a blacksmith.
Yet I never abandoned my artistic dreams. I enrolled in an evening school run by the Histadrut. I knew that talent alone would not make anyone a real artist—one must learn and study. I was 16 at the time.
There I found excellent teachers, such as the painter Avraham Yaskel and the sculptor Kafri from Nahalal.”
Q: What were your first works? What influenced you?
A:
“My first painting depicted a woman selling eggs, with her child beside her in torn clothes, begging her to buy him new clothes for the holiday.
“In the second painting, the child had received new clothes and stood before the Eid swings with a broken heart—he had no coins to pay for a ride.
“Certainly I was influenced by my own childhood experiences of displacement and poverty, like the overwhelming majority of our people who endured one of the gravest catastrophes and still suffer its consequences. My family was among those displaced from Haifa in 1948. We ended up in Damascus, where we found shelter in a mosque. I was about seven years old.
“But the things I saw—those experiences—remain engraved in my memory with terrifying clarity. They stamped all my later works.”
Between Tragedy and Hope
Q: Yet your paintings do not reflect pessimism. Despite the tragic aspects, they radiate hope.
A:
“That is thanks to the influences that shaped me after my family returned from Syria in 1951 through the family-reunification program.
“Not long after settling in Haifa, I joined the Communist Pioneers in 1952. Two years later I joined the Young Communist League. When I reached adulthood, I became a member of the Israeli Communist Party.
“In the party I was educated theoretically and practically. I lived through a period of intense persecution of Arab workers. Military permit systems, the expulsion of Arab workers from workplaces under Histadrut supervision—all justified by the claim that they were ‘unorganized’—when the real aim was to replace them with Jewish workers.
“At that time I wrote diaries filled with my impressions and emotions. I never stopped drawing. I felt an urgent need to depict both the tragedy of our people and their struggle. Poetry was at the forefront of struggle, while visual art was still in its infancy. I decided to make art my main path—especially after my first exhibition in Tel Aviv at the party club in 1962, which succeeded beyond expectation.”
He recalls with gratitude the Communist Party press, especially Al-Ghad, which published his drawings and paintings. Ibrahim Malik was the first to write about his work, praising his promising talent and urging its development.
The Communist Party did not withhold support; when he requested the opportunity to study in a socialist country, it was granted. In late 1964, he traveled to the GDR, facing new challenges.
He completed secondary school, learned German, benefited from Dresden’s renowned art library, and enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts.
There he discovered the aesthetics of his own heritage, studied Islamic art, and learned how aesthetic concepts are embodied in its forms.
Artistic Direction
Q: Was your work and study limited to painting?
A:
“No. I focused on graphic art (black and white) and mural painting because they are tools of struggle—means of responding quickly to events and reaching every home, aiding the people’s struggle.
I also studied philosophy and aesthetics.
“Mural painting, especially panoramic murals, is a tool that brings art to the masses—important in a society unaccustomed to museums. Murals do not replace museums, but they create a kind of everyday museum visible to all.
“It is no coincidence that this form of artistic struggle emerged in Mexico, where struggle is the daily bread of the masses. The Mexican painter Siqueiros emphasized murals as a revolutionary tool that brings art from its ivory tower to its rightful owners—the people.”
He also studied monument design and began in Germany designing a memorial symbolizing solidarity among peoples.
Style and Themes
Q: What is your artistic school?
A:
“After receiving my diploma in graphic art and mural painting, I tried to apply and reshape what I learned within our own reality. I was aware of the contradiction: we had great poets and beautiful language, but painting had not reached the same level.
I tried, along with my colleagues, to help art catch up—and we have made respectable progress.”
Q: What subjects do your works address?
A:
“They address the same themes as our writers and poets—those concerning our steadfast, struggling people. My early works reflected fear: the child showing half his face, the other half hidden behind his mother.”
Q: Which artists influenced you?
A:
“Among non-local but Palestinian painters, I was influenced by Ismail Shammout and Ibrahim Hazimeh.
Shammout depicted the harsh reality directly, offering viewers a sense of the path forward.
Hazimeh’s works are infused with longing.
I tried to depict refugees not only in their immediate suffering, but in their continuous movement and search for a solution and a place.
“There are no local painters with an established school to follow. I am working to build a local school of painting—a long journey.”
The Art Movement and His Students
He speaks with joy about the growing artistic interest in the country—“a natural reaction to long-term dryness.”
He praises young promising painters such as Khalil Rayan (Tamra), Anis Abu Rukn (Isfiya), Adeeb Kamal (Daliyat al-Carmel), Marwan Abu al-Hayja (Tamra), and Zahir Zaydani (Nazareth), the last of whom completed his studies in the GDR.
He takes pride in assisting talented emerging artists such as Kamal Malhim (Kafr Yasif), Suad Nasr and Therese Nasr (Haifa), and Salman Saks (Kafr Yasif).
Current Work and Closing
Q: What is your latest work?
A:
“I am currently building the Land Day Martyrs Memorial, which I designed in collaboration with the well-known Hebrew painter Gershon Knispel. The memorial will be unveiled on the second anniversary of Land Day, on 20 March 1978.”
As a people’s artist, Abed Abdi’s work is not limited to canvases and murals. He has designed a large number of posters that contributed to the party’s election campaigns and the people’s various struggles.
We wish him continued success in his artistic journey—which is, in essence, service to the cause of the people, and service to peace and socialism.
And we see no harm in an artist becoming renowned during his lifetime. Beyond being a fair reward for his efforts, such recognition encourages greater creativity—and in the end, the people are the true beneficiaries.
translated from Arabic, source:
