
Born
in Beirut in 1916, the Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair is
a pioneer of abstract art in the Arab world.
Firmly believing in the arithmetical
basis of Islamic art, she has long rejected figurative thinking
and relinquished all symbolic or iconic references. Her art, never
descriptive, shunned all that was personal in a quest for the ethereal.
She became famous for her sculptures
that were composed of several individual pieces that could be either
separated or assembled, just like the verses of an Arabic poem.
Choucair, who cherished science, has also intuitively followed the
Sufi experience in applying her artistic concepts. The final shape
that she envisioned was an abstract form with infinite interactions,
a blend of equations that existed between the elements of the piece
and their surroundings.
For many years Saloua Raouda
Choucairs theories and creations went largely unappreciated
and misunderstood except of some small circles of fans that originated
in lAtelier de lArt Abstrait in Paris and then expanded
to include art lovers of all generations and nationalities.
This book presents the reader
with more then 250 colored plates of this phenomenal artists
work, It also includes analytical texts that would shed some light
on her philosophy and experience.
|