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Painter, sculptor and engraver, Hussein Madi was born in Chabaa, in south Lebanon in 1938. He received his initial training at ALBA (l’Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts). Subsequently, he went to Rome where he enrolled at the Academia di Belle Arte and at the Academia di San Jacomo.

In Rome he undertook advanced research on cultural heritage in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt. He went back to Lebanon and taught sculpture and engraving at the Institute of Fine Arts of the Lebanese University and, from 1958 to 1962, at ALBA. Since 1964 Madi has been living between Beirut and Rome. He has been exhibiting in Europe since 1965. Hussein Madi makes use of the art of calligraphy, today consisting of symbols which were originally pictograms.

Madi tries to take these symbols back to the time when writing was half-picture, half-symbol. He has thus reconciled the real, represented by a partial image, with the symbolic, connected with the inner life of man. Between these two poles, he has built marvelous worlds, the realistic one which binds man to the earth and the symbolic one binding man to his conception of the world. In this manner, he satisfies both the eye and the mind at the same time. Madi’s contemporary artwork denotes an extremely profound understanding of the artistic and spiritual oriental tradition. He has held over 50 solo exhibitions in Beirut, Rome, Milan, Venice, Geneva, Tokyo and Dubai. Madi’s work is housed in many private and public collections around the Arab world.