Saloua Raouda Choucair

Widely considered the first abstract artist in Lebanon, Saloua Raouda Choucair’s practice encompasses painting, sculpture, jewellery, textiles and works on paper. Influenced by Arabic poetry, architecture, mathematics, and Islamic design, Choucair constructed a visual language that has a distinctly modular, architectural quality. The dual influences of Islamic design and the radical Modernist movements of Paris are at the core of Choucair’s work.

Choucair learnt to draw and paint under Omar Onsi and Moustafa Farroukh, prominent Lebanese artists who adopted impressionist and realist styles. At the end of the 1940s Choucair spent three important years in Paris where she absorbed the current themes, trends and philosophies of European modernism. Her vibrant gouache paintings from this period highlight her experiments with repeated, modular forms inspired by her love of geometry and mathematics. In the late 1950s Choucair began creating wooden and clay sculptures, her sculptures often begun as tiny line drawings that became contours of terra cotta maquettes, germinating from oak wood, to bronze, to polyurethane. From the 1980s she had begun to experiment with aluminium, plexiglass and nylon thread, relating to her ambitions to incorporate water and movement into her practice. Choucair’s ideas are often worked out across different materials - forms from her early paintings are repeated in later sculptures and in other mediums - to express her belief that art should be a living, architectural reality.

Saloua Raouda Choucair’s (b. 1916, Beirut, Lebanon) work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions including; Musée d’art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France (2024); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; Wallach Art Gallery, New York, US (2023); Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE (2023); Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg, Germany (2022); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2021); MoMA, New York, US (2019); Sursock Museum, Beirut, Lebanon (2019); Kunstsammlung Museum, Düsseldorf, Germany (2018); Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2016); Kunsthalle, Bern, Switzerland (2015); Mathaf, Doha, Qatar (2015); The 12th Sharjah Biennale, Sharjah, UAE (2015); Tate Modern, London, UK (2013); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2013); Maqam Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon (2010). Her work is housed in the collections of LACMA, Los Angeles, US; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, US; Smith College of Art, North Hampton, US; MoMA, New York, US; Tate Modern, London, UK; Centre Pompidou, France, Paris; Sursock Museum, Beirut, Lebanon; Mathaf, Doha, Qatar; Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi, UAE; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE.