"A desert has a sweeping neat softness that has to be transferred through to the brush."
Born in Jeddah to a father who is a collector and a mother who is an expressionist artist, Pillower never chose painting. It was already there.
Raised between Switzerland and Saudi Arabia, between the precision of European landscapes and the texture of his Gulf roots, his practice has always lived at a crossing point. He studied History and Economics in Switzerland, then completed an MBA in Barcelona. But the studio was always open.
Working with oil, acrylic, and gesso, his paintings move through parallel forces: structure and emotion, memory and now, the intimate and the monumental. He shares his practice between Saudi Arabia and Europe. In 2026 he opened his studio in Jeddah, where he presented his first solo exhibition, Al Sofra, in June.
“Badr’s work operates as a dialogue of opposites: narrative and abstraction, humor and gravity, intimacy and distance. His paintings feel emotionally direct yet conceptually aware, grounded in expressionism while informed by a contemporary sensitivity to structure, symbolism, and psychological space.”
G. Rickli