Kamal Boullata (1942, Jerusalem – 2019, Berlin) is a painter and writer. Following Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War and the annexation of Jerusalem, he was denied the right to return from Lebanon to his city of birth. In the last five decades he has lived in the USA (1968–92), Morocco (1993–96), France (1997–2012), and, since 2013, in Germany.

Boullata was a key player in the history of modernism in the Arab world, a history that was long neglected, but is now attracting substantial academic and popular attention. His work is notable for its ability to engage historical Christian and especially Islamic art and architecture as a resource capable of energizing and inspiring modern and contemporary aesthetic traditions.

Boullata is a graduate of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC. His work is found in private and public collections including the British Museum, London; the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; the Patronato de la Alhambra Islamic Museum, Granada; the Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah; the Museum of the Institut du monde arabe, Paris; the Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman; the New York Public Library; the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; The Arab Bank, Amman; the Bibliothèque Louis Notari, Monaco; the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Arab Art Foundation, Beirut; the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal; and the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.

The recipient of a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship in 1993 and 1994 and a Ford Foundation grant in 2001, Boullata was elected as a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg/ Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin in 2012. He is the editor of several books on modern poetry and contemporary culture and the author of four books on Palestinian art: Faithful Witnesses: Palestinian Children Recreate Their World (1990); Istihdar al-Makan: Dirasat fi-l-Fan al-Tashkili al-Filastini al-Mu‘asir, (Recovery of Place: A Study of Contemporary Palestinian Art), (2000); Palestinian Art: 1850 to the Present, (2009); Between Exits: Paintings by Hani Zurob. (2012).

A selection of his writings appears in There Where You Are Not, edited by Finnbar Barry Flood. A selection of writings on his art appears in Uninterrupted Fugue, edited by Burcu Dogramaci both published by Hirmer in 2019. Essays he has written in Arabic and in English have appeared in exhibition catalogues, anthologies and academic journals. Translations of his writings have appeared in French, German and Spanish.