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Ad Code: 3
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from Auction House Records.
Summer of Mr Hulot on the mediterranean
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Artist, fashion designer, curator and important figure of
the Los Angeles cultural scene, Huguette El Khoury Caland
is the daughter of the
first president of Lebanon, Bechara El Khoury. In 1952
she married Paul Caland, the nephew of the publisher of
Lebanon’s L’Orient newspaper, which eventually merged
with her uncle’s rival publication Le Jour. This striking
defiance would characterize much of her career over the
course of 50 years, as she maintained a rebellious spirit
and refused to be limited by purported social boundaries,
surpassing expectations in every aspect of her work.
Born in Beirut in 1931, she began embroidering and
painting hand-made gowns while in her mid thirties.
Although married with children at the time, she enrolled
at the American University of Beirut in 1964 where she
studied art. Relocating to Paris in 1970 and then living in
New York for a year in 1981, she returned to France in
1983.
In the capital she studied in the atelier of Romanian
sculptor George Apostu and worked on a series of stone,
wood and terra cotta works, expanding the already
diverse range of her oeuvre.
After settling in Los Angeles in 1988, where she remains
till this day, she began exhibiting regularly both in
the US and abroad, in Europe, Asia and the Middle
East.
A gallery in Beirut has represented
her work since 1993, where it remains on permanent
display. Through exhibiting in Lebanon she developed a
significant following in the Arab world and most recently
participated in Art-Paris Modern Art Fair in Dubai, Art
Dubai, Art Abu Dhabi and was featured in one of the
first public sales of Christie’s Dubai in 2006. Her work
has been highlighted by the Smithsonian Museum in
Washington DC, Tokyo’s Museum of Modern Art, The
Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona and the Monaco Art
Center in Monte Carlo.
In addition to her success as a visual artist, her talent in
fashion design led her to draft a line of clothing for Pierre Cardin.
Perhaps the best summation of Caland’s work is that
which appears in a survey written by the late Lebanese
artist and art critic Helen Khal. The author described
Caland’s work in her 1987 seminal
publication The Woman Artist in Lebanon (Institute for
Women’s Studies in the Arab World) by stating that the
artist explores:
"all the qualities of line, texture, angle and juncture of
limb, torso, and appendage with the absorbed and
innocent eye of a child examining a new toy. Although
the erotica is often explicit, the eye is first provoked
by a highly inventive handling of compositional space,
and follows with aesthetic appreciation Huguette’s
seductive, abstract play line, color, and form. It is only
upon closer, more literal observation that one arrives
at the erotic content—but not before being wooed by
the tender humor and wit of a surreal imagination that
insists on the pleasures of sensual discovery and denies
any taboo." | | Source:
Ayyam Auctions |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
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