Marwan Kassab-Bachi, known as Marwan, left Damascus and Syria for Germany in 1957 in order to study painting at the arts university in Berlin. In 1963, he launched himself as a freelance painter in Berlin and joined the circle of painters formed around Georg Baselitz and Eugen Schönebeck. During the 1990s, the artist organized several solo shows in France and Germany. He paints mainly abstract faces using saturated colours and devoid of any symbolism, apart from existentialist tribulations and poetic reminiscences of an autobiographical life lived between Damascus and the Pankow neighbourhood, where he lives in Berlin – meaning both everywhere and nowhere.