Saloua raouda choucair prints

Art presented Saloua Raouda Choucair with a hyper-reality in which to explore universal structure, cosmic meaning, and the transformation of the self and society. Following her holistic vision, she produced sculptures, architectural plans, fountains and pools, housewares, and jewelry. Fiercely intellectual, she read across quantum physics, Arabic poetry, molecular biology, and optics.

Critics seeking to attach her work to schools in Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, and Cairo from the s to the s brandish the labels "Abstract," "modernist," "geometrist," "neo-plastic," and "Arab-Islamic," but each misses an aspect of Choucair's drive to map the expanses of experience. Most importantly, she never pursued intellectual exploration merely for its own sake.

Saloua raouda choucair foundation

She conceived of each artwork as containing possibilities for its maturation and metamorphosis, and for social intervention by provoking the audience's self-reflection. Her greatest goal—to install her work in ordinary outdoor arenas, especially in the Arab world whose growth was so dear to her—was never satisfactorily realized during her career.

Saloua Raouda Choucair was born in Beirut on June 24, The third child of Salim Rawda, an urbane pharmacist and rentier, and Zalfa Najjar, a well-educated relation, she entered an unusual household. Even with the adversity posed by Salim's death while a conscript in the Ottoman army in , Zalfa maintained a comfortable lifestyle for her family while partaking of the rapidly growing city's new educational opportunities and feminist and nationalist mobilization.

All three children would complete college and became prominent for their social leadership and activism. Choucair enrolled at the American Junior College for Women currently the Lebanese American University , Beirut - and concentrated in the natural sciences.

Saloua raouda choucair tate modern

After a hiatus when her family had to leave Lebanon due to her brother's visa status, she continued her artistic training in Beirut with Omar Onsi, a leading local painter of landscapes, portraits, and what Choucair later called "realist, classical" works. Despite early recognition of her talent, masterful mentors, and relative material ease, Choucair refrained from professional art practice until she was in her thirties.

Perhaps her long reticence relates to her subsequent insistence on integrating art into public space and domestic life. Including Constantin Zuraiq and Georges Habash among its members, the ACC was one of many local organizations systematically debating the meaning of independence achieved in and the war in Europe.