Huguette Caland
Lebanese, 1931- (active USA)

Mustafa Acrobate, 1971
Ink on paper
9 ½ x 12 ½ in.



Huguette Caland (courtesy Lombard Freid Gallery, NYC)

COMMENTS

One of the most significant female artists in the Arab world of the 20th century, Caland has been 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 humor 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.

Born in Beirut in 1931, Huguette Caland took her first painting lessons at 16 with Manetti, an Italian artist living in Lebanon. After the death 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.

http://www.galeriejaninerubeiz.com/ArtistDetails/45/Huguette%2520El%2520Khoury%2520Caland/



SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

Huguette Caland lived and worked in Beirut, Paris and New York before moving to Los Angeles in 1987, where she was based until 2013. Although she has since returned to Beirut, she spent the last several decades living and working in Venice Beach among such notable artists as Billy Al Bengston, Ed Moses, Ken Price, and Nancy Rubins. only recently recognized by the art world, her multifaceted body of work encompasses drawings, paintings, and sculpture. She also enjoyed a brief moment of fame in the 1970s for kaftans that she designed for haute-couture designer Pierre Cardin.

Throughout all of her work Caland employs a highly personal, sensual, and poetic use of line that gives rise to a range of playful forms. In her ink drawings, distinctively minimalist contiguous lines develop into bodies in surprising and often humorous ways. Here they morph into nudes that entwine like inseparable lovers, lock together in acrobatic formations, and elicit close inspection. Her individual language of abstraction celebrates the body with a sense of unbridled sexual freedom and life-affirming energy.

- Summer Nocturne, 2018