Lebanese painter and classical musician Ribal Molaeb is primarily concerned with the play of air and light, his painterly attention caught by a deep observation of the sky, viewed directly from the vast panoramas that surround his home and studio in the mountains of Lebanon, the village of Baissour. Perched high on what feels like a summit, his vision is taken by the vastness of the sky, a rhythmical composition in which he seeks to describe aspects of his highly attuned aural and visual landscapes.

Molaeb’s paintings are images of movement, observations of the changing sky as it shifts from day to night, unhurried from season to season. Sweeping across the canvas, his brushstrokes at times apparent, the paint is hurried and yet delicate, capturing what is before him with the vastness of nature translated to the large scale that he has chosen. 

These skies are groundless, appear that way, and yet there is almost always a darker aspect towards the ground of his canvases, a reminder of earth, edge, even as it is clear this this element too is rolling, transforming with the light. Sound emerges, the memory of music grounded in a particular tradition, the complex formality, rhythmic and undulating crescendos and decrescendos of the classical form. 

Molaeb is a prolific worker, creating sweeping strokes of colour across large canvases depicting the sky as it shifts from light to dark and the depth of colour that he observes between. Yet, if observing the sky is his painterly passion then Ribal has another that is perhaps of equal importance. A professional musician, he has spoken of the way in which his musical interest has profoundly shaped his artistic vision, noting that his artistic focus ‘lies in the interplay and equilibrium of lines, forms, and colour gradations’, a trait that he considers influenced by his background in classical music.

The paintings of Ribal are paintings of light, but more than this they are paintings of internal space, a limitless psychological landscape that speaks to sound as well as to vision. The pace of the paintings is rhythmical, an ordered series of spaces that speak of a fluid yet ultimately tethered relationship to place and world.

Born in Baissour, Lebanon, in 1992, Ribal Molaeb moved to Salzburg at the age of 17 to study at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. He later continued his studies in Vienna at the University of Music and Performing Arts, where he received his Master's degree in Arts with distinction.After relocating to Zürich, Switzerland, Ribal was appointed artistic director of the "SUMITO" Art and Music Association.
Since early childhood, he had worked as an assistant to his father, the acclaimed artist Jamil Molaeb. In 2015, he founded the Molaeb Festival for Chamber Music and Fine Arts.
Ribal’s paintings have been exhibited with prominent galleries and institutions in cities including New York, Tokyo, Fukuoka, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Amman, Beirut, London, Paris, Antibes, Madrid, Amsterdam, Geneva, Basel, and Zürich.

Recent solo exhibitions include Artifact (New York, 2025), Mizoe Art Gallery (Fukuoka, 2025), Mizoe Art Gallery (Tokyo, 2025), Galerie Esther Woerdehoff (Geneva, 2022), and Galerie Claude Lemand (Paris, 2021). Among his participations in international art fairs, he presented a solo exhibition at Volta Basel Art Fair (2024) and Zürich Art Fair (2024), and was featured at Art Paris (2022), Contemporary Istanbul (2025), and Art Fair Asia Fukuoka (2025).
A painting by Ribal has been acquired by the Museum of Arab Art in Paris (IMA).
Currently living and working in Zürich, Switzerland, Ribal is represented by Saleh Barakat Gallery in Lebanon and Mizoe Art Gallery in Japan.