A painter whose career spanned decades, Elias Zayat (1935) is considered as one of the great modern artists from Syria. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo and majored in art restoration at the Academy of Fine Arts and Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. He is one of the founders of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Damascus and is a conservator of religious icons. He has published several articles on the history of art, iconography and art criticism.