Marwan Kassab Bachi (1934 - 2016), one of the most acclaimed of Arab artists, moved to Germany from his native Damascus in 1957 and studied painting for 6 years at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in what was then West Berlin. He went on to teach there until 2000, and he spent most of his life in Germany. In the painting classes of Hann Trier at the Berlin academy, he met Georg Baselitz (born 1938), who from the late 1970s onwards became one of the most celebrated and controversial German painters.