Renowned as an artist, writer, and poet, Gibran Khalil Gibran, known in the United States as Kahlil Gibran, was a key member of the early Arab American literary and arts...
Renowned as an artist, writer, and poet, Gibran Khalil Gibran, known in the United States as Kahlil Gibran, was a key member of the early Arab American literary and arts community. Gibran was born in Lebanon in 1883, but emigrated with his family to Boston, MA in 1885.
The author of the literary masterpiece The Prophet, Gibran was an artist of text as well as images. In 1908, Gibran moved to Paris to attend art school, where he studied with sculptor Auguste Rodin, who compared him to British poet and painter William Blake. Infused with a mystical quality, his work has been described as a poetic encounter between Eastern and Western traditions.
Gibran’s Twenty Drawings was the first volume of his artwork published in English, only his second book to be published in the United States. The twenty early illustrations feature delicate, emotional expressions of the human form and an exploration of man’s relationship with nature.
Completed four years before publication of The Prophet, the book of 20 early illustrations only sold a few hundred copies. This copy is one of only 100 to have been specially bound and autographed by Gibran.
In 1932, the contents of Gibran's studio in New York, including his furniture, his personal belongings, his private library, his manuscripts and 440 original paintings, were transferred to his native town Bsharreh. This collection is now known as The Gibran Museum. The largest public collection of his visual artworks in the United States are held by the Telfair Museum in Savannah, GA, and have been featured in exhibitions The Art of Kahlil Gibran, 2010 and Visions of the Prophet, 2012.