Louay Kayali was born in Aleppo in 1934, where he lived, studied, and held his first school exhibition in 1952. Louay Kayali headed to Damascus to study law in 1953, and in 1957 Kayali got a governmental grant to study art in Rome. There Kayali worked under the famous Italian artist Gentillini, won many awards, had a public row with his teacher, held his first personal exhibition in 1958, and was invited to participate in the prestigious Venice Biennial in 1960.
Back to Damascus in 1961, he was appointed at the Fine Arts faculty of the Damascus University, and started to attract wide attention among the artistic circles in Syria. Most of the debate surrounding Louay Kayali was not about his artistic merits but whether he was representative of a native national artistic school, or that of an international/western style. He continued to exhibit his works in Italy (in Milan, 1064 and Rome 1965), but went through a major artistic transformation after his seminal painting “Then What?” after which he focused on the political struggle of the Arabs, their national resistance movements, and particularly, the Palestinian’s struggle for freedom and independence.
The Arab defeat of 1967 traumatized Louay Kayali and caused him an acute nervous breakdown. He destroyed all paintings of the previous phase and had to be hospitalized in Beirut for almost a year and a half. Kayali never really regained his health after being released from the psychiatric hospital, becoming more and more dependent of Valium and other tranquilizers.
In 1969, Louay Kayali went back to teaching at the Damascus University, but his deteriorating health forced him to resign and head back to Aleppo in 1971. In Aleppo, Kayali reemerged from the wreckage and lived through a new phase of creative productivity depicting in his themes the poor, the hard working and the underdogs of the Syrian society. His status as the foremost Syrian painter started to be recognized, and he held several successful exhibitions in Aleppo, Beirut, Damascus, and Canada. Louay Kayali's very last major exhibitions in Damascus (1976) and Aleppo (1977) were met with astounding acclaim. However, his health continued to deteriorate and his loss of weight was unstoppable that he resembled a human skeleton by 1978.
In September 10, 1978, Louay, who was living alone, was partially burned by a fire caused by a cigarette he had dropped on the carpet while heavily sedated. He was hospitalized in Aleppo and Damascus, where he suffered tremendously. Louay Kayali passed away on December 26, 1978. Kayali is buried in Aleppo.
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