Yvette Achkar

One of Lebanon’s leading abstract painters, Yvette Achkar was born in Brazil to Lebanese parents, a twin and the second youngest of nine children. When she was ten, her family moved to Beirut. Passionate about music, Y. Achkar strove to become a professional pianist until she was told her small stature technically prevented this path. Deeply disappointed, she took up painting, encouraged by Fernando Manetti (1899-1964), a Beirut-based Italian artist and teacher at the newly founded art department of the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (Alba). In 1947 Y. Achkar enrolled at the school, part of a cohort – including Shafic Abboud (1926-2004), Helen Khal (1923-2009), and Jean Khalifé (1923-1978) – that was to shape Lebanon’s modern art world as pioneers of abstraction. There she formed life-long friendships and met architecture student Jean Sargologo, whom she married in the early 1950s; they divorced a few years later. The need to support herself as a single mother pushed her to prepare her first solo exhibition. Opening at Beirut’s Galerie La Licorne in February 1960, the exhibition was an immediate success.