Noor Soussi
Head of Department
Lot 45
Sliman Mansour(Palestine, born 1947)Guardians of the Land
25 November 2025, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£40,000 - £60,000
Ask about this lot
Nima Sagharchi
Group Head
Lylia Hafiz
Sale Coordinator
Sliman Mansour (Palestine, born 1947)
Guardians of the Land
oil on canvas
signed "Sliman Mansour" in Arabic and English and dated "2015" (lower right), executed in 2015
84 x 66cm (33 1/16 x 26in).
oil on canvas
signed "Sliman Mansour" in Arabic and English and dated "2015" (lower right), executed in 2015
84 x 66cm (33 1/16 x 26in).
Footnotes
Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Gibraltar
Acquired directly from the artist by the above
Few artists have captured the spirit of Palestinian identity and resilience as powerfully as Sliman Mansour. In Guardians of the Land, Mansour returns to his enduring themes of belonging, endurance, and the deep bond between people and the land. Painted in 2015, this composition embodies the artist's mature style, defined by clarity of form, symbolic colour, and a quiet, monumental stillness.
The two figures, a man and a woman rendered in profile, stand proudly before a landscape of olive trees, a recurring emblem of rootedness and continuity in Mansour's visual language. The woman's embroidered thobe, painted in vivid hues, evokes traditional Palestinian craftsmanship and cultural memory, while the man's keffiyeh and calm gaze suggest vigilance and steadfastness. Their presence together becomes an allegory for collective endurance, protectors of heritage and custodians of the land's enduring spirit.
Through his balanced composition and luminous palette, Mansour fuses realism with symbolism, transforming the rural landscape into a site of cultural assertion and dignity. Created decades after his seminal works of the 1970s and 1980s, Guardians of the Land reflects the artist's continued commitment to portraying the Palestinian narrative with humanity, strength, and poetic restraint.