Born in 1948 in a rural village near ancient Babylon, Jaber Alwan graduated from the Institute of Fine Art in Baghdad in 1970.

In 1972 he moved to Italy to continue his higher education in Rome at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1975 he graduated from the Sculpture department under the guidance of renowned Italian sculptor Emilio Greco. and in 1978 he graduated from the Painting department. Exiled from Iraq, the artist settled in Rome for good. In 1985 the Municipality of Rome awarded him the prize of Best Artist, the first foreign artist to receive this honour.

His work is part of numerous public and private collections across the world. Among them, the Museums of Modern Art of Baghdad, Iraq; the Modern Art Museum of Kuwait; The Dubai Collection, UAE; The Atassi Foundation, UAE; the Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar; the Museum of Modern Art of Damascus, Syria; the Sharjah Art Museum, UAE; the Cairo Opera House, Egypt; the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal; and The Jalambo Collection.

Jaber Alwan lives and works in Rome, Italy.