Marie Balian

Marie Balian was born in 1925 in Lyon

Marie Balian's family came from Kutahya in Turkey and fled on foot to Greece in 1917, then sailed to France. She grew up in Lyon. She began drawing at 6 and was doing portraits at 10.

She studied at the national school of fine arts in Lyon but left for financial reasons. In 1953 she met her distant cousin Setrak Balian, who was studying ceramics in England. They married in 1954 in Bethlehem.

In 1955 the couple lived in Amman, where Setrak managed a ceramics factory. In 1965 they returned to Jerusalem and ran the family workshop on Nablus Road, known as Palestinian Pottery, where Marie was the master painter. She brought Armenian motifs such as trees, animals and birds into her work and gave the designs movement.

She later moved to large tile panels, including works for the President's residence in 1990. In 1992 the Smithsonian Institution showed her exhibition "Views of Paradise" for 6 months. In 2004 her mural "Secrets of Paradise", made of 1000 tiles, was installed on a building in Jerusalem. She died on September 13, 2017.