B
orn in Beirut in 1916, Saloua Raouda Choucair is regarded as Lebanon’s first true modern abstract artist, and a leading radical sculptor of the Arab world. Choucair’s prolific career spans almost six decades, and is defined by her tirelessly ambitious and experimental disposition to volume and space.
In her refusal to be ironed into the turn of the century’s expectation of female conformity, Choucair offered a rare voice as she emerged ardently onto Beirut’s art scene from the 1940s. After attending a progressive new girls’ school that attempted to quell the tropes of a conservative culture, she studied at the American University of Beirut under the tutelage of renowned realist and Impressionist painters Mustafa Farroukh and Omar Onsi. Choucair’s artistic sensibility was no doubt inspired by her time in Paris from 1948-1952, where she attended the École des Beaux-Arts and the studio of Fernand Léger (1881-1955). Choucair also frequented the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, which offered an alternative to her more orthodox studies and allowed her to absorb the dynamic spirit of the Parisian art scene. After receiving much local critical appreciation, she returned to her beloved Beirut where she dedicated herself to her unwavering creative purpose.
"Like every artist, I look for a new conception of beauty, of how I see the world in terms of all the many different forms and materials it contains. In everything around me I find this beauty of form, this perfect order of shape, proportion, and design sequence. I try to make others see it, too. I look upon my work as the mirror of our age.”
Choucair became preoccupied by art and architecture from the Islamic world in the early stages of her career following a trip to Egypt in 1943. Enthralled by the streets and mosques of Cairo, and in defiance of a professor who had claimed that the Greeks had culturally surpassed the Arabs, she adopted the aesthetics and philosophies of Islam and their underpinnings of science, mathematics, and literature. Following two of the essential elements of Islamic design - line and curve - Choucair relinquished subjectivity and Romantic expression in a quest for rationality. Here we can locate her among the international art scene; she shared in part the desires of the minimalists, constructivists, and modernist architects. During a trip to Marseille, she encountered Le Corbusier’s unfinished Unité d'Habitation which, similarly to the architectural qualities of her sculpture, confronts issues of space through modularity. Also sharing Choucair’s fascination with puzzle-like structures and the boundless transformational quality of the line is Barbara Hepworth, who similarly reimagines the confines of static form. Owing to her radical approach, her work has been associated as “part of the school founded by Matisse to rebel against classical art” (S.H., ‘Ma‘rad li al-rasim al-tajridi fi Bayrut’, Al Nahar, vol. 29, no. 5022, p. 4). In experiencing the European avant-garde first-hand, Choucair was able to formulate her own unique response to the current of modernism, which she considered a global phenomenon, tempting her audience to dismantle conceptions of modernity as inherently Western.
Often made from stone, one of Choucair’s favourite materials as exemplified in the present lot, her sculptural works have the distinct ability to oscillate between manmade and natural, industrial and organic, static and fluid. Originally conceived in her later period in 1972 and recast in 2009, Infinite Structure explores the artist’s enduring fascination with the interrelation between forms and possibility for endless de- and reassemblage. As indicated by the title of this piece, Choucair’s sculptures remain in a continuous process of reimagining, deviating from standard conceptions of the medium as rigid and unchanging. The work can be seen perhaps as a homage to Constantin Brâncuși’s Endless Column, which similarly addresses notions of infinite construction. The alternating curvature of the independent modules as well as the potential for reconfiguration grants the work a sense of fluidity, both stylistically and physically. Playing with principles of gravity and balance, this kineticism is often central to Choucair’s remarkable visual vernacular. Potential - both of the conceived idea and beyond the finalised object - forms the crux of her sculptural oeuvre.
“The art of Saloua Raouda Choucair has the ability to grow and transform. This hallmark keeps her art alive; by definition and design, Choucair’s art is a project that is always ‘in the making."
A testament to her success, many of her works have been acquired by major international institutions beyond the Tate, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; LACMA, Los Angeles; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; the Smith College Museum of Art, Massachusetts; the Art Institute Chicago; the Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah; the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; and the Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut. She remains rare at auction, with less than ten sculptural works previously appearing on the market, and her bronze Poem achieving just over half a million GBP (hammer) in London earlier this year. Sotheby’s is honoured to present this extraordinary work by pioneering artist Saloua Raouda Choucair, who has established a firm place at the heart of Lebanon’s art history, as well as that of global modernism.
