- Home
- ARTISTS
- Etel Adnan
- Ghada Amer
- Hangama Amiri
- Yto Barrada
- Rana Begum
- Huguette Caland
- Manal Al Dowayan
- Mandy El-Sayegh
- Monir Farmanfarmaian
- Simone Fattal
- Lamya Gargash
- Daniele Genadry
- Zeinab Al Hashermi
- Mona Hatoum
- Susan Hefuna
- Maryam Hoseini
- Helen Khal
- Hayv Kharaman
- Laleh Khorramian
- Tala Madani
- Shaikha Al Mazrou
- Maysha Mohamedi
- Naqsh Collective
- Shirin Neshat
- Monira Al Qadiri
- Farah Al Qasimi
- Alymamah Rashed
- Haleh Redjaian
- Mona Saudi
- Hoda Tawakol
- Helen Zughaib
- About
- News
- Contact
HUGUETTE CALAND
About the Artist
Huguette Caland (b. 1931 – d. 2019, Beirut, Lebanon) was an artist resolutely ahead of her time, who only rose to prominence later in life. In recent years, Caland’s work has been exhibited at Made in LA (2016) and at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017). She had her first solo museum exhibition in the UK at Tate St Ives in 2019.
Caland was born into a high-profile political family. Her father, Bechara El-Khoury, was the first president of Lebanon after the country became independent from France in 1943. In 1968, she graduated from the American University of Beirut, majoring in fine arts. In 1970, she left Beirut to pursue the life of an artist in Paris.
In the French capital, Caland started painting the 1973–1976 series of erotically charged depictions of female forms entitled Bribes de Corps (Body Parts). Her evocative images recall undulating landscapes, the mountain-like shapes and fluid lines coming together in an interplay between figuration and abstraction. The artist’s creativity extended beyond the realm of fine arts into fashion: she collaborated with designer Pierre Cardin to create a haute couture collection of kaftans that took Paris by storm in the mid-1970s. Kaftans were a marker of identity and taste for Caland, who rejected the limiting, commercialised standards of beauty upheld by Western fashion.
Huguette Caland at work. Courtesy the estate of Huguette Caland.
WORK IN THE COLLECTION
Huguette Caland, "Untitled", 1986
Acrylic on canvas, 31 x 31 cm
Courtesy the estate of Huguette Caland
Untitled (1986) is emblematic of Caland’s minimal radicalism, with a strong chain of colours and forms traversing an otherwise void canvas. Her work delicately treads the fine line between the natural landscape and an abstract view of the world. Untitled is an outstanding example of the free movement of the artist’s hand and bears witness to her desire to live without restrictions.
Personal experience informs the lyrical, sensual lines that Caland inscribes on her canvas. The artist remarked that her lines,‘tell a story of my life, of people I met along the way, whom I loved and found and even lost.’ Techniques exploiting illusion give the work an unprecedented depth, challenging our conceptual understanding of perspective and surface.