Noah El Hachem (b. 1999, Germany) is a Düsseldorf-based artist. He completed a BA in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2021 and has also studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

El Hachem’s paintings combine carefully rendered portraiture with an intuitive language of ornament, repetition and abstraction. Figures appear suspended within compositions of recurring eyes, leaves, sweeping curves and angular structures, producing images that feel at once psychologically charged and composed. Although rich in symbolism, his works resist fixed narratives, instead creating contemplative spaces in which the body, its surroundings and the painted surface remain in continual negotiation.

Early twentieth-century architecture is central to El Hachem’s visual language, particularly the sculptural sensibility, asymmetry and organic geometries associated with Art Nouveau. Influenced by architects including Hector Guimard and Peter Behrens, he draws on the ways architecture borrows from biological forms, mathematical rhythms and calligraphic gestures. The characteristic Art Nouveau “whiplash” curve has become a form of visual handwriting within his work, emerging instinctively through the act of drawing.

For El Hachem, the meaning of a painting resides as much in the movement and character of its marks as in its subject. Portraiture becomes a vehicle through which an intuitive and continually evolving pictorial language can unfold.