The Lebanese artist Huguette Caland lived and worked in Beirut, in Paris, and briefly in New York before settling in Los Angeles, where she was based from 1987 to 2013. Despite a consistent international exhibition history, she remained relatively unknown locally, exhibiting in Los Angeles on only a handful of occasions even as she formed remarkable ties to the city’s artistic scene. Her unique home and studio in Venice, based on a design by the architect Neil Kaufman but bearing Caland’s imprint, functioned as a nexus for notable artists, poets, and thinkers, including Billy Al Bengston, Ed Moses, Ken Price, and Nancy Rubins. Amid these social commitments, Caland produced multiple bodies of work and series that reflect an exploratory studio-based practice that moved fluidly among styles, mediums, materials, and subject matter.
Through-lines apparent in Caland’s work—the female body, eroticism, her own preoccupations with desire, to name a few—represent, in many respects, the joyously defiant output of an artist whose tendency was to be provocative through beauty and an engagement with otherwise taboo themes. A fixation on the poetics of line is evident throughout her oeuvre, whether in the sinuous drawn lines used to demarcate fragmented parts of her own body and those of her lovers in early works on paper or in the almost obsessive repetition of standardized linear marks in her later works, which reflects a focus on the limits of the structural power of lines.
Aram Moshayedi writes of Caland’s “Bribes de corps” series: “Part and parcel of a language of abstraction, Caland’s canvases from this series resemble curvilinear forms that are based on exaggerates features of the human figure. Often painted in a muted palette, the works that are part of her “Bribes de corps” reflect a consistent interest in depicting the body in a simplified visual style, all the while implicating the artists’ own physicality as source material. Speaking to a historical lineage in which the female nude was depicted from the standpoint of a distinctly detached masculine gaze, Caland’s take on the body is marked by her feminine perspective, the subjectivity of the work enduringly present.”
Her work was featured in the 2012 exhibition, Modernités Plurielles 1905-1970 at the Centre Pompidou and Twenty-three works, including three kaftans displayed on enigmatic mannequins designed by the artist, were shown in the Arsenal’s Dionysian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. In March 2019 Caland’s work was included in the Sharjah Biennial as part of a group presentation curated by Omar Kholeif. Caland was also subject to a retrospective of her work at the Tate St. Ives in May 2019 - her first UK museum solo exhibition.
Huguette Caland’s work is included in private and public collections across the Middle East, Europe and the United States, including British Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Fondation National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; LACMA, Los Angeles; Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego; Palm Springs Museum of Art, Palm Springs; Tate, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Born 1931 in Beirut, Lebanon. Lived and worked in Los Angeles, CA.
Died 2019 in Beirut, Lebanon.
EDUCATION
1964
Studied art at the American University of Beirut
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022
Huguette Caland:Tête-à-Tête, Wiels Museum, Brussels, Belgium
2021
Huguette Caland: Tête-à-Tête, The Drawing Center, New York, NY
Huguette Caland, Arts Club Dubai, UAE
Huguette Caland: Bronzes, Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles, CA
2020
Huguette Caland: Faces and Places, MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar
2019
Huguette Caland, Tate St. Ives, UK
2018
Huguette Caland: 1964, Galerie Janine Rubeiz Gallery in Beirut, Lebanon
Exhibition 2: Huguette Caland, IAIA New York, New York, NY
2016
Silent Letters, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY
2014
Early Works: 1964 – 2012, Lombard Freid Gallery, NY
2012
Huguette Caland: 1964 – 2012, Beirut Exhibition Center, Beirut, Lebanon
2011
Under Cover, Peter Findlay Gallery, New York
Mes Jeunes Années, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
2010
Caché, Caché, Venice, CA
2009
Silent Memories, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
Autumn, LA Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA
Silent Memories, Peter Findlay Gallery, New York, NY
2006
Rossinantes, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
Rossinantes, Galerie Samy Kinge, Paris, France
2004
Recent Work, Saint Germain Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA
2003
Introspective, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
2001
Silent Letters, Galerie Samy Kinge, Paris, France
2000
L’Argent, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
1999
Silent Letters and Touchables, Bergamont Station, Santa Monica, CA
1998
Scapes & Escapes, Elena Zass Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
1997
Faces and Places II, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
1994
Faces and Places I, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
1992
Gallery 5, Santa Monica, CA
Toepel Gallery, Kirkland, WA
Bella Interiors Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
1986
Rajz/Drawing ’86, Pesci Galeria, Pésc, Hungary
1985
A Thousand and One Nights, Cultural Center of Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France
1984
Lebanese Artists, Monaco Art Center, Monte-Carlo
Painters and Poets in Sologne, Drawings for Salah Stetié, Aubigny sur-Nère (Cher), France
1980
Galerie Faris, Paris, France
1970
Dar El Fan, Beirut, Lebanon
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021
Women in Abstraction, Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
FIGURE/S: Drawing after Bellmer, The Drawing Room, London, UK
MEI: Middle East Institute of Arts & Culture, Washington, DC
Women in Abstraction, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Boundless Drop to a Boundless Ocean, Orlando Museum of Art, FL
Treadbare, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK
2020
Painting, Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles, CA
2019
Surrogates, Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles, CA
2017
Huguette Caland, Various works, 1971 – 1995, Arsenale, 57th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
2016
Made in LA, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
2015
Metropolis: Paintings of the Contemporary Urban Landscape, Curated by David Ebony, Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, New York, NY
2014
Prospect.3 New Orleans Biennial, curated by Franklin Sirmans, New Orleans, LA
I shall stay the way I am because I do not give a damn… - Dorothy Parker, Lombard Freid Gallery, New York, NY
2013
Modernitées Plurielles 1905 – 1970, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
2012
Le Corps Découvert, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France
La Création LIbanaise, Espace Claude Lemand, Paris, France
Artists X Architects, V-Scape Venice, CA
2011
Looking Back, V-Scape Venice, CA California Art, Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Fullerton College Art Gallery, Fullerton, CA
Galleria Ipazia, Italy
2010
Convergence: New Art from Lebanon, American University, Washington, D.C. From Elsewhere to Here: Here is Elsewhere, Pacific Design Center Weissman Foundation
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
2009
Recent Work, Lucy Topalian Gallery, Kuwait
2006
Pinceaux pour Plumes, Fondation Libonaise de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Musée Sursock, Beirut, Lebanon
Recent Work, Saint Germain Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA
2004
Free Style, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, CA
2001
Salon International d’art Contemporain-Artuel, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
St’Art 2001, Fire D’art Contemporain de Strasbourg, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
1997
Spécial Janvier, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut, Lebanon
1996
Blessings and Beginnings, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA
The Female Perspective, Museum of Art and Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA
1993
Forces of Changes, Artists of the Arab World, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
1986
Le Portrait A Roulettes (with George Apostu), Sales, France
The Arab World Today, Permanent Delegation of the Arab States to UNESCO, Paris, France
1984
Femina: In Memory of Alicia Penalba, UNESCO, Paris. France
Peintres et Poètes en Sologne, drawings for Salah Stetié, Aubigny-sur-Nère, France
1979
Peintres et Poètes en Sologne, drawings for Andrée Chédid, Aubigny-sur-Nère, France
1978
Peintres et Poètes en Sologne, drawings for Alain Bosquet, Aubigny-sur-Nère, France
1972
L’Estampe Contemporaine, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France
American University of Beirut
1971
Sixteen Lebanese Artists, Delta Gallery, Rome
Islamic Contemporary Art, ICA, London
1970
Contemporary Lebanese Artists, Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan
Grafica D’Oggi: the 36th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
Lebanese Artists, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Helen Khal and Huguette Caland, Atelier Caland, Kaslik, Lebanon
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Agial Art Gallery , Beirut, Lebanon
Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beiruit, Lebanon
Galerie Tanit, Beirut, Lebanon
Institute of Arab and Islamic Art, New York, NY
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France
Fondation National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
Palm Springs Museum of Art, Palm Springs, CA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY
Aldis Browne Fine Art, La Jolla, CA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Tate, London, UK