Back to ‘55: An Imaginary Mediterranean Landscape 

Ink on card, 20 cm x 28 cm, 1963

Raffoul’s memory serves as a way of honoring two homelands– Palestine and Lebanon– where he was born and raised, respectively. When he left to study in the United States, he intended to secure and maintain an emotional and imaginary attachment to the land he left behind when he was expelled from Palestine in 1948. In fact Maroun Tomb tutored Raffoul in Tripoli, Lebanon during the summer of 1955, influencing him to this day to utilize the techniques from those lessons to eternalize memories of a beloved lost landscape known as the Mediterranean basin. This work was originally the result of an assignment in University back in 1963 where Raffoul had to draw an imaginary landscape, which took him back to memories of home. 

Palestinian-British architect Antoine Elias Raffoul was born in Nazareth, Palestine, in 1941. His family and he were expelled from Haifa, Palestine, on April 8, 1948, and settled in Tripoli, Lebanon, never allowed to return. He earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Illinois, USA, practicing briefly in New York and eventually settling in London, UK, where he set up his own architectural firm until his retirement in 2012. He advocates for Palestine via the online platform www.1948.org.uk.