Four Iconic Artists From the Arab World
The Arab world’s artistic landscape has been defined by a number of influential figures – many of them women. On Women by Women in Art is a series under The Moving Biographies Podcast which seeks to create a space where women working in the arts today can shed light on key figures, linking the past with the present. In this article, we briefly introduce some of the artists that were featured in this series.
Moving Biography was a summer school organized by LAWHA/OIB (Lebanon’s Art World at Home and Abroad), the American University of Beirut, and the Global (De)Centre in 2022, generously funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. The summer school brought together different perspectives to question disciplinary assumptions and decent life writing. The podcast series is an outcome of the summer school and is a collaboration with the IAAW (Institute of Art in the Arab World) at the Lebanese American University. It was conceived and moderated by IAAW’s director Yasmine Taan.
Dorothy Salhab Kazemi (1942 - 1990)
Dorothy Salhab Kazemi is known as the pioneer of modern art ceramics in Lebanon. Raised between Tripoli and Beirut, she later moved to Denmark to train under Danish ceramicist Gutte Eriksen. After completing her training, she went on to teach at Glasgow University before moving back to Beirut in 1971 and establishing the first ceramics department in Lebanon. Her work has been called a “synthesis between the Occident and Islam, a clear proof of the certainty of harmony in the world.”
Yvette Achkar
Yvette Achkar was born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1928. She was at the forefront of the Lebanese modern art scene and was known for her experimentation with color and what Christie’s calls “a unique language of simplicity in abstraction.” She studied at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) where she joined a group of young pioneering artists who strove to liberate themselves from the traditional forms in pursuit of a new form of expression. After graduating, she spent some time studying in Paris, before returning to teach at ALBA and at the National Institute of Fine Arts of the Lebanese University from 1966 to 1988.
Helen Khal (1923 - 2009)
Helen Khal was an American-Lebanese artist, critic and writer born in Pennsylvania. She trained at ALBA between 1946 and 1948, and in In 1947 met Yusuf al-Khal, a modernist poet, who soon became her husband. Even after her marriage she continued her artistic studies in New York.
Khal’s art was abstract with a distinct use of color. Her first solo exhibition came in 1960 at the Galerie Alecco Saab in Beirut. Beyond her art, she was undeniably at the heart of Beirut’s cultural and artistic scene, making a major contribution by way of establishing the city’s first permanent art gallery in 1936. Gallery One’s inaugural exhibition featured works by Michel and Alfred Basbous, Nadia Saikali, Yvette Achkar, Hrair Diarbekirian, and Assadour Bezdikian.
After divorcing her husband, Khal began teaching art at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and writing as an art critic for publications such as the Daily Star and Monday Morning. She also wrote a book called The Woman Artist in Lebanon.
Mona Saudi (1945 - 2022)
Mona Saudi was a Jordanian sculptor, born in Amman, known for her abstract stone works. She studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and graduated in 1973. Through her use of basic geometric shapes and organic forms, and her enduring relationship with stone, she created an oeuvre that has been displayed all over the world. Darat al-Funun calls her “an artist of opposites…that [marries] the simplicity and coherence of primitive sculpture with the sleek contemporaneity of abstract design.”
