Born in 1911 in Beja, Tunisia, Ammar Farhat left his hometown with his family to settle in Tunis. Due to a precarious financial situation, he never studied and used to work doing different jobs. In 1935, for self-study, he started producing works illustrating portraits of Egyptian actors that he would present in coffeeshops. In 1938, he was awarded the first prize during the group exhibition of Salon de Tunis, which enabled him to travel to Paris. He also visited Rome, Sweden, and Russia, and then, back in his country, he co-founded the École de Tunis in 1949. In his oeuvre, he detached his scenes from an orientalist point of view and illustrated with realism every member of the Tunisian society like fruit sellers and women getting married. He was passionate about music, and the theme is recurrent in the pieces where he portrayed musicians – notably the Egyptian Abd El-Hay Hilmi – or dancing scenes. Ammar Farhat died in 1987 in Tunis and the cultural center of Beja took his name.

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