Huguette Caland

A pioneering figure of abstract modernism, Lebanese artist Huguette Caland’s (b. 1931 in Beirut, Lebanon) multidisciplinary practice spanned both decades and continents, challenging aesthetic and social norms of her time through abstract representations of the female body. Her drawings, paintings, textiles and sculptures render the body in subtle lines and bursts of color that are simultaneously intimate, erotic and bold. In 1970, Caland moved to Paris from Beirut to pursue her artistic practice, a period that saw an exuberant focus on the body. It was there that she deepened the expressive and explicit power of line and colour in her work, creating the Bribes de corps series. Foregrounding the body and its erotic expressions, the paintings from this series shift between figuration and abstraction and established Caland as a key figure in the broader discourse of Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting. Having moved to California in 1987, she forged influential relationships with leading artist such as Larry Bell, Chirs Burden and Ed Moses. There, her practice shifted from abstraction to figuration with emphasis placed on the poetics of line, seen in the series Limousin and Granite and Homage to Pubic Hair. Caland's later works are more intricately constructed 'landscapes' that often resemble the surface of textiles; while the compositions appear differently, these works are evocative of her early drawing from the 60s and 70s. In all her work, a perpetual ambivalence appears between the assertion and the erasing of the body, challenging conventions around beauty and desire, Caland’s practice is simultaneously minimalistic and daringly referential.

Huguette Caland was born to the first post-independence president of Lebanon, Bechara El Khoury. After studying at the American University of Beirut (1964 -70), Caland moved to Paris in 1970 and then Los Angeles in 1987, before returning to Beirut in 2013. Her work has been the subject of a number of solo and group exhibitions, including ICA Miami, Miami, US (2024); The Drawing Center, New York, US (2021); Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, US (2021); Tate St. Ives, Cornwall, UK (2019); Institute of Arab and Islamic Art (IAIA), New York, US (2018); 57th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US (2016); Prospect.3, New Orleans Biennial, New Orleans, US (2014); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2014); Beirut Exhibition Center, Lebanon (2013); Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, US (2012); National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, US (2010). Her work can be found in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, US; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US; Tate, London, UK; The British Museum, London, UK; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA), San Diego, US; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, US. On 23 September 2019, Caland passed away in Beirut at the age of 88.

In February 2025, Caland had her first major European retrospective at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, followed by a solo exhibition in April 2025 at The Arts Club of Chicago, US.