hiruthirut
Saloua-Raouda-Choucair-in-010
Saloua Raouda Choucair in 1974. Photograph: © Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation
Saloua Raouda Choucair, a Lebanese artist and one of the first abstractionists in the Arab world, whose sense of line and form — derived from Islamic art — brought a new idiom to modernism, died on Jan. 26 at her home in Beirut. She was 100.
The death was confirmed by her daughter, Hala Schoukair.
It was not until she was in her 90s that Ms. Choucair (pronounced shoo-CARE), who lived and worked nearly all her life in Beirut, gained recognition outside Lebanon as an unsung hero of the modernist story, a distinctive, eloquent artist relegated to the margins of a traditionally Western narrative.
...for many years, she worked in obscurity — persevering through Lebanon’s civil war in the 1970s and ’80s, filling her apartment with small-scale geometric paintings and modular, interlocking sculptures that reflected a distinctive, highly refined understanding of line, form and materials.
...took painting lessons...studied biology at the American Junior College for Women and philosophy and history at the American University of Beirut. An extended trip to Cairo in 1943 exposed her to Islamic art and architecture.
She helped found the Arab Cultural Center in Beirut and in 1947 exhibited at its gallery in what was often cited as the first showing of modern abstract art in the Arab world.
That year she left for Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, whose traditionalist training she supplemented with classes at the more freewheeling Académie de la Grande Chaumière. ..She developed a series of jewel-like small paintings of interlocking geometric forms...
New York Times
Saloua-Raouda-Choucair-in-010
Saloua Raouda Choucair in 1974. Photograph: © Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation
Saloua Raouda Choucair, a Lebanese artist and one of the first abstractionists in the Arab world, whose sense of line and form — derived from Islamic art — brought a new idiom to modernism, died on Jan. 26 at her home in Beirut. She was 100.
The death was confirmed by her daughter, Hala Schoukair.
It was not until she was in her 90s that Ms. Choucair (pronounced shoo-CARE), who lived and worked nearly all her life in Beirut, gained recognition outside Lebanon as an unsung hero of the modernist story, a distinctive, eloquent artist relegated to the margins of a traditionally Western narrative.
...for many years, she worked in obscurity — persevering through Lebanon’s civil war in the 1970s and ’80s, filling her apartment with small-scale geometric paintings and modular, interlocking sculptures that reflected a distinctive, highly refined understanding of line, form and materials.
...took painting lessons...studied biology at the American Junior College for Women and philosophy and history at the American University of Beirut. An extended trip to Cairo in 1943 exposed her to Islamic art and architecture.
She helped found the Arab Cultural Center in Beirut and in 1947 exhibited at its gallery in what was often cited as the first showing of modern abstract art in the Arab world.
That year she left for Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, whose traditionalist training she supplemented with classes at the more freewheeling Académie de la Grande Chaumière. ..She developed a series of jewel-like small paintings of interlocking geometric forms...
New York Times