Lebanon is a mural size painting by Nabil Kanso depicting the Lebanese Civil War in a scene invoking the spirit and character of the people in the midst of horror and violence gripping the country. Amid the scene of chaos and devastation, two central figures reach across toward each other symbolically to represent the appeal for unity in defiance of the forces of division, destruction, and terror. Description Painted in oil on linen and completed in 1983, the painting Lebanon measures long by tall. Its composition delineates three sections. At the center, two leaping female figures reach toward each other, almost touching. They are within grasp of a tiny pearl of white green light at the center of the canvas. In the foreground plane forming the base of the two converging figures, an appealing mother carrying a child appears bursting out from a torched pyramidal structure serving to balance and heighten the overall impact of the central scene. To the right side of the canvas stands a woman with her arms outstretched upward against an ascending perspective of a scene of devastation and destruction with scorched buildings and the gushing of human and animal suffering. They are presented as metaphors for the destruction besetting Lebanon and its capital city Beirut. The right foreground is occupied by two lamenting women with hands over their heads and one covering the eyes of a child. The left section of the painting draws focus on the figure of what appears like a Druze sheikh steering out from the picture plane with a desperate calling. He is flanked on his left by a roaring horse and in front of him lies a fallen maiden wrapped with the flag of Lebanon behind protruding dark fists shaped like crawling tentacles. Above him, a wingspan bird covering a half-hid sun hovers over the contour of trees projecting flames that encircle infants floating around the arc of wide arms flung by a pleading figure underneath. Background During the Lebanese Civil War which broke out in 1975 and raged for 15 years with unabated violence killing more than 100,000 with many more injured and destitute, Kanso had made several trips to his native war-torn land. Throughout the period of the conflict, he executed a wide range of major paintings on the Lebanon war whose portrayal and theme evolved to universal expressions on human brutality and suffering. The paintings constitute a