Saloua Raouda Choucair

Saloua Raouda Choucair (; June 24, 1916 – January 26, 2017) was a Lebanese painter and sculptor.

Life and career Born in 1916 in Ain El Mraisseh, along Beirut's coastal Corniche, Lebanon, Choucair came from a family of doctors, lawyers, engineers and historians. Her father, Salim Rawda (1872-1917) was an expatriate in Australia trading herbs and writing manuscripts on their medicinal values. Instead, she explores principles of Islamic design and Arabic poetry within a modernist, non-objective artistic lens. #tag:ref Other sources consider her exhibition in 1952 at the Saint Joseph University to have been the first exhibition of abstract art in the Middle East. to head to Paris with her brother-in-law, Fouad, who had to travel there for business. Before returning to Lebanon, she had her first exhibition in Paris in 1951 at the Colette Allendy gallery, and the solo show included works she had originally displayed in Beirut, in addition to paintings she produced during her time in Paris.

In 1959 she began to concentrate on sculpture, which became her main preoccupation in 1962. In 1974, the Lebanese Artists Association sponsored an honorary retrospective exhibition of her work at the National Council of Tourism in Beirut.

In 2013 the Tate Modern held the first international retrospective of Choucair's work.

Choucair's work has been considered as one of the best examples of the spirit of abstraction characteristic of Arabic visual art, completely disconnected from the observation of nature and inspired by Arabic geometric art.

Choucair received a prestigious honorary doctorate from the American University of Beirut (May 2014).

Her artwork "Poem" is on loan to Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Choucair turned 100 in June 2016. In 1953, she had married journalist Youssef Choucair, and they conceived one daughter together, Hala, who also became an artist. Her older sister, women's rights leader Anissa Rawda Najjar, lived for almost 103 years, but her daughter had been killed during the war.

Tribute On June 24, 2018, a Google Doodle commemorated Saloua Raouda Choucair's 102nd birthday.

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions "Saloua Raouda Choucair: The Meaning of One, The Meaning of the Multiple", Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha , 2015, curated by Laura Barlow. Noble Forms, Salwa Raouda Choucair, Maqam Art Gallery, Beirut, 2010 Retrospective. Salwa Raouda Choucair, Beirut Exhibition Center, 2011 Saloua Raouda Choucair, Tate Modern, 2013

Group exhibitions The Road to Peace, Beirut Art Center, 2009 Art from Lebanon, Beirut Exhibition Center, 2012 Women in Abstraction, Centre Pompidou, 2021