Saloua Raouda was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1916. Her father, Salim Raouda, died in Damascus in 1917 while a conscript in the Ottoman army, so she and her two siblings were raised by their mother, Zalfa Amin Najjar. She studied at the Ahlia School and then graduated from the American Junior College for Women (currently the Lebanese American University) in 1936, where she concentrated on science.

In 1937, Saloua moved with her family to Iraq, where she started teaching drawing – a talent that came naturally to her – as well as science. Her interest in science and math later came to inform her art in some profound ways. She admired the absolute and concrete nature of these subjects, as she was able to see mathematical truisms in forms that she chose for her art pieces.

Upon returning to Lebanon, she studied for some time with the celebrated painter Omar Onsi. Her interest in abstract expression grew substantially during an extended trip to Cairo in 1943, where she was impressed by the sophistication and interconnection of lines and forms in the Islamic designs and architecture she saw in that city.

While enrolled in some philosophy classes at the American University of Beirut (AUB), she was told by one of her professors that Greek art was superior to Islamic art because Islamic art lacked human images. This was the catalyst for her commitment to pursue the artistic expression she found so essential.

Saloua traveled to Paris in 1948 on what was supposed to be a few months’ visit. However, she ended up staying more than three years, studying sculpture, lithography and fresco techniques, among other art forms. Her involvement with the Atelier de l’Art Abstrait provided her with stimulation and exposure to other abstract expressionists. “Those were fantastic years for me,” she recalled. The works of Delauney, Kandinsky, Vasarely, Duchamp, and Mondrian became part of her everyday discourse. She worked and grew, exhibiting her work where it was acclaimed for its power and originality.

She returned to Lebanon and married Youssuf Choucair in 1953, who was a journalist at that time. Their only child, Hala, said of her mother: “Growing up with her was fun because she was always playing, but everybody respected her passion.” Saloua obviously enjoyed being a mother, but never stopped her pioneering work, vitally looking for inspiration in modernity and the scientific developments that have always fascinated her.

Saloua experimented with a wide range of materials and 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. While cherishing science, she 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.

Saloua’s theories and creations went largely unappreciated and misunderstood for many years. She remained largely unknown outside of a small circle of art lovers until a major 2011 retrospective in Beirut that introduced her to a new generation of national and international audiences. That was followed by a 2013 exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, which showcased a variety of her pieces and earned her enormous international public and critical praise.

Consequently, Saloua’s work started receiving increasing global recognition, becoming part of the permanent collections of major museums around the world. Those include the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Pompidou in Paris; Tate Modern in London; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Sharjah Art Foundation and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, among others.

Saloua was also awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by AUB in 2014, which was followed by the installment of one of her major sculptures on campus in 2018. In addition, the Lebanese government honored her posthumously by featuring one of her paintings on a postal stamp in 2021.