Here is something I have been thinking about for a while: we write about art all the time, but what about those who are only just getting into it? Where do they even start?

That question brought me back to Muriel Asmar, the art curator who helped us make sense of a Lebanese exhibition we covered about a month ago. And really, who better to talk about Lebanese art than someone from Lebanon? Who better to guide us through it than an independent curator with years of experience? And who better to explain it without all the intimidating art jargon than a mum of curious kids?

So I asked Muriel a simple question: if someone knows absolutely nothing about Lebanese art, which five works should they start with? Think of it as a crash course, minus the homework and dusty textbooks.

What is it? A cornerstone of Lebanese art, its very own Mona Lisa, if you like. One of those works you simply need to know.

While we aren't here for the artists' life stories, but rather for what their artworks are actually about, we couldn't start our journey through Lebanese art without a quick introduction to Omar Onsi, one of the pioneers of modern Lebanese painting. And if you want a familiar point of reference, think of Claude Monet in France: not in terms of fame, but in how both changed the way their countries' landscapes were painted.

Don’t take that too literally, though. Onsi didn't invent Impressionism. Instead, he took a visual language that already existed in Europe and used it to portray Lebanon through a local artist's eyes. This was the first half of the twentieth century, when modern Lebanese painting was still finding its feet, and Onsi's work brought together several artistic approaches:

So what made Onsi special? It wasn't that he was the first to paint Lebanese landscapes. It was that he helped make them part of the country's artistic identity. Through his use of light, colour and atmosphere, familiar mountains, villages and coastlines became more than just scenery. They became images of Lebanon itself. And Onsi wasn't alone in this. Alongside other artists of his generation, he helped establish landscape painting as one of the defining traditions of modern Lebanese art, one that would continue for generations.

What is it? The work that captures Lebanon before the Civil War.

In 1964, the Lebanese public met Enfantine. Its creator, 38-year-old Shafic Abboud, had moved to Paris back in 1947, and that decision turned out to be rather important. In Paris, he found himself among artists who were busy challenging the very idea of what a painting should look like — and he was more than happy to join in.

But when his work made its way back to Beirut, not everyone was quite so enthusiastic. Enfantine won the top prize at the Salon d’Automne at the Sursock Museum, but instead of universal applause, it sparked a scandal.

Why? Because the canvas looked nothing like what people were used to seeing. No faces, no landscapes, nothing immediately recognisable to hold on to. Just planes of blue, pink, violet and red. For some in the art community, this raised a rather uncomfortable question: was modern art becoming an exclusive club, with only a select few able to understand what was going on?

And while that debate continues to this day, the moment marked a turning point for Lebanese modernism. Abstraction had stepped out of the studio and into public debate.

What is it? The work that helps explain what the Civil War changed in Lebanese art.

Now, onto the darkest chapter of our crash course, one that Lebanon would probably rather have skipped altogether, but whose consequences are still felt today: the Civil War.

It began in 1975, and the contrast with the Beirut we saw through Shafic Abboud's work could hardly be greater. Just a decade earlier, artists were experimenting with new styles and debating what art should look like. Now, with the country at war, the question of what art could do took on a whole new meaning.

For Aref El Rayess, one answer came in 1976 with The Road to Peace, a series of 37 works that confronted the horrors unfolding in his homeland.

Interestingly, El Rayess wasn't even in Lebanon when the war broke out. He had travelled to Algeria for an exhibition, only to find himself following events back home from afar. Unable to ignore what was happening, he began translating the destruction and his own feelings of horror and anger into drawings that made no attempt to soften the reality of war.

The story didn't end with the drawings, either. Back in Lebanon, El Rayess turned them into engravings, intending to publish them as a book titled The Road to Peace in 1978. Except the authorities had other ideas. The publication was censored, the book never officially appeared, and the engravings spent decades tucked away in his studio in Aley.

What is it? The work that explains the aftermath — post-war Lebanon and what came next.

When a war ends, it feels like time for fun, happiness and love. And perhaps it is. But the fighting may be over, while the memories aren’t. And that is an important part of the story of Lebanese art after the 1990s.

Take Mohamad Said Baalbaki, for example. Born in Beirut in 1974, just a year before the Civil War began, he spent much of his childhood moving with his family between different neighbourhoods of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon. So when he created Heap in 2014, almost a quarter of a century after the war ended, he was returning to something he knew all too well: the experience of having to leave home.

Now, look at the work itself. Clothes, fabrics, suitcases and other belongings, piled one on top of another. No people, no recognisable scenes of war. And that is precisely the point. A packed suitcase doesn't always mean a holiday. Sometimes it means leaving for safety, folding your life into whatever you can carry, and unpacking it somewhere else without knowing how long you will stay.

And perhaps that is what makes Heap so telling. Created decades after the fighting stopped, it shows how war continued to shape Lebanese art, even when artists were no longer depicting the war itself.

What is it? The work that could only have come from Lebanon.

So far, our journey through Lebanese art has taken us from the birth of its artistic identity to modernism, the Civil War and its aftermath. But then comes this dense, geometric composition, seemingly unrelated to any of it. Yet Muriel described it as a work that could only have come from Lebanon. Quite a statement. So what makes it so distinctly Lebanese?

The answer lies in how Madi brought two artistic worlds together. On one side, European abstraction; on the other, Arabic calligraphy, geometry and the visual traditions of the region. Rather than simply following European modernism, he developed his own artistic language, one rooted in both influences.

And this painting offers an early glimpse of what would become his signature style: repeating figures, bold colours, geometric shapes and flowing lines.

There is another detail worth remembering: the work dates from 1977, right in the middle of the Civil War. But that doesn't mean it is about the war. In fact, it reminds us that Lebanese artists were exploring much more than conflict, even while living through it. Questions of form, nature, language and cultural identity were just as much a part of the country's artistic story.