American, born in Lebanon, nabil Kanso grew up in Beirut where his family lived in a house overlooking the city along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and designed with high ceilings and walls adorned with Western and Oriental works of art. He attended schools having a rigorous program of a balanced French and Arabic curriculum. He was taught to draw by his his mother who introduced him to various images of Eastern and Western art. When the 1958 Lebanese conflict forced schools to shut down for more than a year, he occupied some of his time making drawings and sketches of people and scenes. The violence enveloping the country left a deep impression on him. 

In 1961, he went to London and enrolled at the Polytechnic. His five-year stay in England opened up new and wide horizons which permitted him to make close and deep studies and explorations of British and European art and culture. In 1966, he moved to New York and attended New York University where he received BA and MA in art history, political science, and philosophy. He took intensive art courses of self-training and embarked on exploring  the art scene and developing his ideas and visions of art and painting.

In 1968, he  established a studio in New York, and evolved an instinctive and spontaneous style set forth on a large format of figurative composition. In 1970, he founded Artists Space comprising his studio and gallery where conferences, shows, and performances took place. Between 1971 and 1974 he held several major solo shows at the 76th Street Gallery. The exhibitions consisted of a large number of oil paintings and works on paper depicting figurative compositions with an attendant emphasis on vibrant color and movement, and the use of expressive brushstrokes. They make references to expressionist and romantic works of Goya, Delacroix, Gauguin, Munch, Rouault, Nolde, Dix, and Orozco.

Coming to public view at a time of hightened interest in figurative art, the exhibitions were attended by a wide segment of critics, dealers, and museum directors and curators, among them  Alfred Barr, first director of the Museum of Modern Art and Henry Geldzahler, curator of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum.

While Kanso's works drew attention and critical reviews in various art publications, his studio needed to sell more art to keep it going.  In 1974, his studio was seized and its contents including over 700 paintings were placed in storage and, eventually, were destroyed.

In carrying on making art, he worked in different locations in the Northeast and South executing large-scale paintings wherein the turbulent elements of his earlier work became more cataclysmic and apocalyptic in nature.  In 1975, at the outbreak of the Civil War in Lebanon, he began the Lebanon series, developed the Split of Life series, and over the years created a wide range of works reflecting his visual life.
 
In 1980, he took a studio in Atlanta, and held exhibitions in various galleries and art centers. In 1983, he took his work to Venezuela and began an extensive series of major exhibitions that traveled to various cities worldwide.