Huguette Caland

Born in Beirut in 1931, Huguette Caland (née El Khoury) took her first painting lessons at 16 with Manetti, an Italian artist living in Lebanon. Following the passing of her father, Beshara El Khoury, one of the founders of the Lebanese independence and its first president, Caland decided to pursue her dream to become an artist. 

After spending four years at the American University of Beirut where she studied Fine Arts, Caland moved to Paris in 1970. Liberated from social obligations she was able to blossom and meet many contemporary artists. In 1987, she moved to California where she established the studio of her dreams. 

Caland’s art is regularly featured in solo exhibitions or in group shows all over the world and was acquired by Centre Pompidou, La Bibliothèque Nationale, MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum-New York, Toledo Museum of Art, The Tate, The British Museum, LACMA, Armand Hammer, Museum of Fine Art Houston, San Diego Museum of Art, Palm Spring Museum of Art, Sharjah Art Foundation, as well as private collections in the United States of America, the Middle East, and Europe…

From May to October 2024, Huguette Caland’s paintings of the 70s will be featured in a solo show at ICA Miami and from November 2024 to January 2025, an important retrospective covering the five decades of her career will be held at Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. 

Caland passed away on September 23rd, 2019, at the age of 88.

 

About her work

One of the most significant female artists in the Arab world of the 20th century, Caland was a versatile painter, draftswoman, sculptor and conceptual artist, leaving an active legacy and a body of work that connects her native city of Beirut and the ornamental patterns of the East to the disciplined formalism of abstraction and minimalism acquired in Europe. Early on, the artist was immediately drawn to the imaginary of women and their forms, therefore her work was at the time an explosive exploration of sexuality and voluptuousness; clearly ahead of her own time.

While living in Paris and California, the artist became immersed in the avant-gardes of the 20th century, bringing back home an idiosyncratic style, firmly anchored in the reductionist process, but never altogether abandoning a narrative quality, seamlessly interwoven with the lyricism and humour of a skilled story-teller. Moving from rigid symmetrical lines on paper towards dense oil painting and vice versa, Huguette Caland achieves syntactic equilibrium between surface and subject matter, filling space to the brim of implosion, yet never exiting the aesthetic view. The space is here distorted, but never immanent or intangible.

Related Exhibitions

1964 - Huguette Caland

April 11, 2018 to May 10, 2018

Encounters 2023 - Open Call

September 29, 2022 to December 29, 2022

Huguette Caland - Faces and Places I

June 01, 1994 to June 22, 1994

Huguette Caland - Faces and Places II

April 16, 1997 to May 09, 1997

Huguette Caland - L'argent

January 19, 2000 to February 10, 2000

Huguette Caland - Introspective

January 15, 2003 to February 08, 2003

Huguette Caland

May 03, 2006 to May 27, 2006

Huguette Caland

December 02, 2009 to December 30, 2009

Huguette Caland - Mes jeunes années

January 12, 2011 to February 12, 2011

Huguette Caland 1964 - Present

January 16, 2013 to February 24, 2013

Huguette Caland - Bronzes

January 28, 2015 to February 28, 2015

Europ' Art 97- Genève

April 30, 1997 to May 04, 1997

Artuel - Salon International d'art contemporain

July 25, 2001 to July 28, 2001

Collective Exhibition

December 03, 2008 to December 31, 2008

Art 14 London

February 28, 2014 to March 02, 2014

Abu Dhabi Art Fair 2013

November 20, 2013 to November 23, 2013

Art Dubai Art Fair 2013

March 20, 2013 to March 23, 2013

Beirut Art Fair 2013

September 19, 2013 to September 22, 2013

Abu Dhabi Art Fair 2011

November 16, 2011 to November 19, 2011

Art Dubai Modern 2014

March 14, 2014 to March 22, 2014

Art Dubai Modern 2016

March 16, 2016 to March 19, 2016

Abu Dhabi Art Fair 2012

November 19, 2009 to November 22, 2009

Abu Dhabi Art Fair 2014

November 05, 2014 to November 08, 2014

Abu Dhabi Art Fair 2016

November 16, 2016 to November 19, 2016

Art Dubai Art Fair 2011

March 16, 2011 to March 19, 2011

Art Dubai Art Fair 2010

March 17, 2010 to March 20, 2010

Abu Dhabi Art Fair 2009

November 19, 2009 to November 22, 2009

Abu Dhabi Art Fair 2017

November 08, 2017 to November 11, 2017

Europ' Art 2003 - Genève

April 30, 2003 to May 04, 2003

Convergence - New Art From Lebanon

April 08, 2010 to May 16, 2010

Huguette Caland - Retrospective

January 16, 2013 to February 24, 2013

La Fiad - Art Deco '99

May 18, 1999 to May 23, 1999

L’Art aux enfants – Journée coup de cœur

December 09, 2001 to December 09, 2001

L'Art aux enfants - troisième edition

December 07, 2003 to December 14, 2003

Peindre les tissus - Collective Exhibition

January 06, 2005 to January 20, 2005

Oeuvres Récentes - Collective Exhibition

January 14, 1998 to January 31, 1998

Accrochage Noel - Collective exhibition

December 01, 1993 to December 24, 1993

Huguette et Nadine, L'histoire d'une amitié

September 28, 2023 to November 11, 2023

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