Under the title ‘A life in a few lines’taken from one of his works, the first great retrospective in Europe of Lebanese artist Huguette Caland It brings together, until August 25, on the fourth floor of the Reina Sofía Más … of 300 works distributed in twelve rooms. It has been carried out in collaboration with the Deichtorhallen de Hamburg, where the sample will be seen from October. In September 2024 the Israeli army invaded the Lebanese airspace and then the land. The result, more than one million displaced people. Thirty -three works of museums, foundations and private collections of Lebanon, both of their youth and their last stage, they have not been able to travel to Spain because You could not guarantee your safety and have been replaced by others. The high fire was not yet signed. One of the works that has not been able to travel is the one that gives title to the exhibition.
Despite his five decades of career, he is a little known artist, but in recent years his figure has claimed with a Great international projection: It has a work at MoMA and the Met of New York, the Tate Modern and the British Museum in London, the Lacma and the Hammer Museum of Los Angeles … In 2017, two years before his death, he participated in the Biennial of Venice.
The only child of the first president of the Independent Lebanese Republic, Bechara el Khourandthe artist was born in Beirut in 1931, when the country was still under French mandate. Take her husband’s last name, Paul Calandwith whom he had three children. Polifaceted artist (Painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, writing, design …), rejected labels. His work addresses the playful, the grotesque, the vital, the political … I was always creating, drawing. He constantly challenged the aesthetic, social and sexual conventions of his time. Transcends limits and bordersIt has Arab, Asian and Western influences. Create a Unique languagein which he plays with the lines and color.
Designs for the ‘Nour’ collection by Huguette Caland with Pierre Cardin
His first works evoke pop and surrealism: Self -portraits, urban landscapes, fantastic creatures … between their themes, language and communication, identity, emigration, sexual behaviors, landscape, economy and money, love … also, the aging of The woman, “a subject not sufficiently addressed by feminism.” Your famous series ‘Body pieces’made in Paris, plasma, with chromatic wealth and a minimum formal expression, ambiguous, sensual partssuggestive of the female body: breasts, thighs … considered erotic, the curator of the exhibition, Hannah Feldman, art professor at the University of Pennsylvania, specialist in the Middle East and North Africa, sees her more as a search for the autonomy of his own body as an erotic work.
Huguette used to dress caftans. Know the dressmaker Pierre Cardin, which commissioned some prototypes for a ‘capsule collection’ of Haute couture abayas and household items inspired by Islamic art. The baptism ‘nour’ (light in Arabic). Some hang in the exhibition. Also, Caffanes he performs with a Lebanese tailor. But he did not want to sacrifice for commercial design.
The sample route takes us through series such as ‘money does not buy fecility, but it contributes greatly to it’, portraits of his lover the painter Ed Moses, the silent letterswithout voice, a film … The trajectory of this artist is singular. He lived in The Lebanon independent before the civil war, the Paris of the 70s and 80s, the bohemia of Venice in Los Angelesfrom 1987 to 2013 … dominated Arabic, French and English. At the end of his life he returns to Beirut, where he reflects on old age in his paintings, such as ‘Rocinante’ (he felt an affinity with Don Quijote’s demacrated steed). His latest works resemble murals, tapestry, bedspreads …
Works of Huguette Caland, in the rooms of Reina Sofía
Manuel Segade, director of the Reina Sofía Museum, affirms that it is “one of the most ambitious samples of the season, last that Borja-Villel was scheduled. Huguette Caland’s painting is A paint full of meatbetween abstraction and figuration ».
Fighter tireless for the liberated one, for Caland, Art and Life, Art and politics They are inseparable. Cofunda in Beirut in 1969 Inaash, an NGO that Help Palestinian women In Lebanese refugees fields to work in traditional work. The director of the Hamburg of Hamburg, Dirk Luckow, warns that “in a world in tensions and wars in the Middle East, political consciousness is more important and necessary than ever. Caland was A rebel artistbut also of great vitalism. Ternura transmits me, It moves me».
The commissioner, who was diving in her archives for four years to prepare this exhibition, warns that “the West is unable to understand the complexity of her work.” Very critical with Donald Trump, he affirms that «The president of my countrywhich is not my president, He has asked Gaza’s ethnic cleaning». At the end of his life, Huguette Caland returns to Beirut, where he dies in 2019 at 88.
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