Huguette Caland, daughter of the first president of the Lebanese Republic, trained under Beirut-based Italian artist Fernando Manetti. In the 1960s, Huguette Caland invested more and more of her time in making art and exploring the Lebanese artistic scene. Her work Suburb (1969) was displayed in her solo show Huguette Caland: Faces and Places at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, in Doha in 2020. On a beige background, Caland used a palette of bright colours to paint abstract shapes, filling them with black lines, dots, squares, and circles. Revealing a quiet sensitivity to fashion design, she imbricated these shapes as if she had stitched them together. The composition looks like a patchwork through which the artist created an imaginary urban landscape. The negative space makes the elements float with a hint of fantasy. Caland demonstrates her appetite for freedom in her practice, escaping from reality to let her emotions guide her.
—Arthur Debsi
