Image: Galeri Harlech
Paintings by the Syrian artist Jehad Taisan are on view at galerieRIETVELD in Amersfoort, the Netherlands, from 23 July to 30 August 2026. The exhibition, ‘Jehad Taisan. Schilderen als taal van hoop en schoonheid’, is organised by the Rietveldpaviljoen, which states on the gallery’s event page that it is the organiser; galerieRIETVELD is an initiative of the pavilion.
Taisan, born in 1968 according to the pavilion’s newsletter of 19 August 2026, worked for years as an artist and as a teacher at an art academy in Damascus. When he fled to the Netherlands with his family in 2013 he had to leave his entire body of work behind, and he rebuilt his practice from a studio in Baarn. The organiser describes his paintings as combining influences from older Eastern art and icon painting with a contemporary, colourful visual language, with figures, animals and symbolic elements flowing into one another.
A recurring motif is a female figure inspired by Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and peace known in Western culture as Venus, standing for hope, beauty and resilience; organic forms, trees and wood recur as references to growth and connection. Where his work in the first years after the outbreak of war in Syria drew on conflict and loss, the organiser writes that he now works deliberately from the opposite position, of peace, love and humanity. Taisan is quoted on the exhibition page saying: “Mijn droom is dat liefde en vrede zich over de hele wereld verspreiden.”
Practical details, from the organiser’s page and the newsletter: galerieRIETVELD is at Zonnehof 4A-5A, some 50 metres from the Rietveldpaviljoen at Zonnehof 8, and is open Thursday to Sunday from 12:00 to 17:00. With the run ending on Sunday 30 August, four opening days remain. Neither source gives the number or titles of the works shown, or a curator.
The exhibition appeared alongside other items in the same newsletter, including the pavilion’s summer group show ‘From Township to Amersfoort’ and the solidarity exhibition ‘Helpen is de kunst’ (3–6 September); those are separate projects.
