Stelio Scamanga (1934 - 2021) was born in Damascus to Greek parents in 1934 before the family relocated to Beirut in 1952. His artistic journey from the late 1950s until his death in 2021 embodied the complex cultural crosscurrents of mid-20th century Middle Eastern art. Trained as an architect, he began painting inspired by Byzantine iconography, before gravitating towards abstraction. He was a painter renowned for his abstract works blending a passion for architecture with lavish, lyrical expression and was a key figure in shaping the Lebanese artistic scene.

Scamanga came to prominence in Beirut during the early 1960s, the halcyon era before the civil war, that came to be known as the ‘Golden Sixties’. He was a leading light in the city’s febrile art scene, organising a collective that included peers such as Yvette Sargologo, Nadia Saikali, Mounir Najm, Assem Stetie, Helen Khal and Mohamad Sakr. His commitment to new languages for abstraction straddling territories and traditions led to his publishing an artistic manifesto in 1964, Toward a New Space: The Perspective of the Abstract, explaining the fundamental differences, as he saw them, between the Renaissance perspective of the West and the more spiritual and interior abstraction of the East.

By the early 1970s, Scamanga’s personal idiom of geometrical abstraction had increasingly imbued his canvases with spiritual narratives. He achieved this by artfully deploying spatial organisation to represent aspects of human existence, from the serene to agitated. His ‘threedimensional concept’ saw horizontal and vertical planes sweep waves of energy up and down and across the painting, resulting in work that took profound reflections upon myriad states of being as central to composition and structure. While reluctant to align himself to any single movement, his work clearly drew on the formal rigour of Constructivism, the inner radiance of Colour Field painting, and the contemplative minimalism of spiritual abstraction.

Scamanga received his Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut in 1960. He held several solo exhibitions at galleries and venues in Beirut in that era, including in: 1960 at Unesco Palace, 1961 and 1970 at Gallery One, 1972 at Modulart GAllery, and in 1974 at Delta International Gallery. Scamanga has also held solo shows at major European institutions including: Atehenee Museum in Geneva in 1987, Centre Cultural Jean Monnet in Saint Genis, FR in 1989 1997, and 2002. Scamanga left Beirut for Geneva in 1976 and ultimately settled in France in 1970 before passing away in 2021. His work is in the collection of the Sursock Museum, Beirut. His work was featured in MOMA's 2018 publication Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents.

“Stelio Scamanga, is among our talented few. He brought his architectural knowledge to an inborn sensibility of color and form that are tangible and mysterious. I see a lot of poetry in his imagery and approach to artistc expression. His art is typical of our time.” - Youssef Al Khal, lebanese poet, founder of the «SHIIR» review, and of “Gallery One”, the first art gallery in the arab world, Beirut, 1970

"Stelio Scamanga, since the period of his 1962 paintings reflects the difference between the arts of Orient and Occident: his pictorial space, rejects the representation of the world. On the static plane of the canvas, the labyrinthic schemes, intermingle, lead to the creation of non cartesian space, rejecting the albertian perspective. Stelio Scamanga witnesses the authenticity of the oriental painter, freeing himself from the west's imperialism of occidental art; he does not borrow, nor assume the decorative plastic elements of the Orient, and its calligraphy, artificially integrated in a pictorial path. This radicalism, and the capacity of going beyond the false problems of the so called return to the heritage, has led him to go to the essence, conferring to the creation of a genuine oriental space." - Joseph Tarrab, lebanese writer, art critic, "L'Orient" Beirut, 1968

“Scamanga's battle is inside the world of painting. With a full mastery of the painting technique, he searches exclusively, the two dimensions; he strives to grasp the space, not the dimensions, but its essential mobility. You can include him in the heart of the Orient, the Orient of the alchimists and their dreams of pure creation.” - Etel Adnan, lebanese artist, writer, “L’Orient-Le Jour”, Beirut, 1974

“No to the Occidental art; yes to the Orient, and the pursuit of the dream, and the signs connected to the person of the Orient. Taking birth from his beliefs, and his roots, integrated with the civilisation of his present existence, Scamanga strives to the spiritualism of the past. It is not a superficial return; it is a new cultural freedom, driven with a contemporary vision, a rich variety of colored values, and the own identity.” - Nazih Khater, lebanese art critic. An Nahar Beirut, 1970