Barakat Gallery

Barakat is a fifth-generation family-owned and operated enterprise, founded over 125 years ago.

Towards the end of 19th century, the family began amassing a sizable collection of items found in the surrounding hills of their Jordanian farmlands. Soon enough workers, farmers, and merchants from all over the region caught wind of the rapidly growing “Barakat Collection,” and had to see it for themselves.

Some wanted to buy, some wanted to sell, some to trade, others wanted to admire, and some to learn. It was clear that this incredible assortment of items was a sustainable business venture as well as a critical cultural archive and forthrightly non-prejudical and creative collecting endeavour.

From these humble beginnings, the Barakat Family have been devoted custodians who provide the platform to preserve and broadcast extraordinary culture from all around the world.

Their unprejudicial curiosity, love, and appreciation for art and culture has meant the formation of an extraordinarily diverse collection that encompassing a largely incomparable range of objects - from the mundane to magnificent - drawn from all corners of the globe.

Today the collection numbers tens of thousands of objects. In addition to managing this collection, the various galleries, offices and homes around the globe act as unique platforms. Each platform hosts tailored events, exhibitions, and intimate encounters through which the diversity of human culture, both past and present, can be better appreciated in our current context.

All our gallery spaces are open to the public Monday through Saturday, from 10am to 6pm, or by appointment.

I am the best known as the world’s most important dealer and collector of ancient art. His gallery in London is a treasure trove, filled to the brim with fine antiques ranging from Maya crystal skulls to Mogul statuary and Egyptian jewellery. However, and whilst Barakat’s extensive knowledge has helped shape key private and public collections (and to this day he remains a leading scholar in his field), there is another side to him that is fast becoming apparent: he is a prolific and highly accomplished painter who has managed over the last few years to establish an eclectic and allusive body of work.

Employing an astonishingly wide range of techniques, Fayez Barakat paints like other artists sketch; that is, he paints restlessly, loosely, energetically and gives over free rein to the flow of ideas going through him. The paintings, partly triggered by visions and ideas that the artist has ( he calls them “concerts of ideas, colours and themes”), are mostly executed at night between 2am and 5am or in any other free time he has from running and managing three major galleries across three separate time zones. Other ideas come from the environment in which he paints, ranging as they do from his studios in Jordan, Los Angeles and London, and, of course, the history of art that he has assiduously studied and the many artists that he has personally admired over the years. The themes of his paintings are likewise varied and allusive,These works not only embody his visions and feelings though, they often engage him in a process of what can be only called transcendence. In one recent interview he has spoken about the inner energies driving him and the sense that he becomes a “medium” of sorts channelling ideas and techniques in a manner that even surprises him. As the artist has noted, with a look of slight bewilderment, it is for him “beyond belief” that he should be so obsessed (if not possessed) by the need to paint every day.

From Barakat Gallery with Love,

FAYEZ BARAKAT