Lebanese Artist Nizar M. Dager Presents Gift
to the State Hermitage Museum

On 4 December, 2003, Lebanese Artist Nizar M. Dager presented in gift to the State Hermitage Museum his painting Hills created in 2003 to celebrate the 300th anniversary
of St. Petersburg.

Born in 1951 in Beirut, Lebanon, Nizar M. Dager in 1983 graduated from the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad. His dissertation Realistic Landscape in Contemporary Painting of the Arab Orient (Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine) was defended in 1987. In 1992 he became Professor of the Lebanese University’s Department of Painting. Dager has authored a number of academic publications, including Arab Painters and Lebanese Painters’ Landscapes. Nizar M. Dager has taken part in many art exhibitions in and outside Lebanon; his works have been acquired by museums and private collections in Canada, the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and other countries. The artist is a prominent public figure and educationalist in Lebanon. He is adviser to the Minister of Culture, chairman of the Lebanese-Russian House and member of a number of commissions on art issues.

Dager’s painting is an original phenomenon in the contemporary art of Lebanon and the entire Arab world. The artist’s favorite genre is landscape and his main inspiration is his native Lebanese land with its distant lines of horizon, immense sky and blossoming valleys. His original landscapes are full of the author’s emotions; their harmonious compositions and combinations of colors are ultimately enchanting.

Hills
2003
Nizar M. Dager
Lebanon
Oil on canvas;
50 x 65 cm