Blanche Lohéac-Ammoun

Blanche Lohéac-Ammoun (20 October 1912 – 5 January 2011) was a Lebanese French painter, illustrator, and writer.

Biography

The daughter of the lawyer and poet Daoud Amoun and the niece of the Ottoman politician , Blanche Ammoun was born in 1912 in Lebanon, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Her interest in art began in her childhood, when she attended grade school in Cairo. She would later attribute this artistic impulse to her half-Italian mother, Victoria Chiha.

She then trained as a lawyer, graduating from the Jesuit School of Law in 1931 alongside Nina Helou as the first two Lebanese women to obtain law degrees.

Lohéac-Ammoun is known for developing her technique of sablirisés or sablinisés, in which she would attach shards of mirror to metal supports, arranged like a mobile. She also used mica, sand, and other materials in some of her paintings to enhance their textures. Her work was also marked by "strong Phoenician tendencies."

Lohéac-Ammoun and her husband had three children; he predeceased her in 1966.

Selected works

Histoire du Liban, Beirut, 1937; 2nd edition, 1940; 3rd edition, Le Jour, 1948 ; 4th edition, Beirut, 1968. Zénobie reine de Palmyre, Le Réveil, 1964 – 1965. Les Phéniciens en quatorze tableaux, Beirut, 1984. Folklore libanais, Beirut, 1986. Liban de jadis et d'hier, Beirut, 1988.