Saloua Raouda Choucair

Her interlocking forms in painting and sculpture incorporate her interests in Arabic architecture and language, alchemy and quantum physics to suggest multiple interpellations of scale and perspective. Like her contemporaries Lygia Clark and Isamu Noguchi, Saloua Raouda Choucair took great influence from the natural world, both its rational organisation and imperfect equilibrium, crafting works that resound with movement and sensuality.
Born in Beirut in 1916, Choucair attended the American University of Beirut. In 1948, she moved to Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts before returning to Beirut in the early 1950s.

In recognition of a career spanning more than half a century, Choucair was given a major retrospective in 2011 at Beirut Exhibition Center (2011) and a solo exhibition at Tate Modern, London, in 2013. She has received numerous honours and awards, both in Lebanon and internationally, including an honourary doctorate from the American University of Beirut in 2014.