|  Helen
Khal (1923 - 2009)
An American
of Lebanese descent, Helen Khal was born in Pennsylvania, USA, and
began painting only at the age of twenty-one. In 1946, she went
to Lebanon and lived there for twenty-five years. Soon after her
arrival in Beirut, she enrolled at ALBA and remained there until
1948. During those years, she met and married the young Lebanese
poet, Yusuf Al Khal. In 1949 she studied at the Arts Students League
in New York. In 1963, she established and directed Lebanon's first
permanent art gallery, Gallery One.
Encouraged by
the Lebanese artist Aref Rayess and others, Helen Khal held her
first individual exhibition in 1960 in Galerie Alecco Saab in Beirut.
Her other one-women shows took place at Galerie Trois Feuilles d'Or,
Beirut(1965); Galerie Manoug, Beirut (1968); at the First National
Bank, Allentown, Pennsylvania (1969); in Kaslik, Lebanon (1970);
at the Contact Art Gallery, Beirut (1972, 1974 and 1975) and at
the Bolivar Gallery in Kingston, Jamaica in 1975. Her work also
appeared in the Biennales of Alexandria and Sao Paulo.
From 1966 to
1974, Helen Khal was Art Critic to two Lebanese periodicals, The
Daily Star and Monday Morning. She taught at AUB between 1967 and
1976. She also wrote a number of publications in the Middle East
and the USA and frequently lectured on art.
Her book The
Woman Artist in Lebanon was first published in 1987 and was made
possible through a grant in 1975 from the Institute for Women's
Studies in the Arab World.
Helen Khal lived
in Washington where she was publications consultant to the Jordan
Information Bureau. She continues to write and to paint.
She was living
in Lebanon when in May 2009 she passed away.
Article
in French:
Helen Khal aime
surtout la couleur diaphane, éthérée. Elle
représente même son unique préoccupation. Depuis
peu elle donne à ses toiles une structure qui permet l'expression
de couleurs vives plutôt que d'en faire un prétexte
à un divertissement chromatique.
Helen Khal est
née en 1923 à Allentown (USA). Elle étudie
à l'Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (1946-1950)
puis à l'Arts Students’ League de New-York. En 1955
elle se fixe définitivement au Liban où elle se consacre
totalement à sa peinture. Au début ses oeuvres traduisent
l'attraction de la couleur et de la forme, de même que l'ambiance
orientale et occidentale. Cependant elle est séduite par
la lumière de la côte méditerranéenne
et la couleur devient alors sa préoccupation fondamentale.
Ou bien elle la travaille, la vaporise, la filtre pour la rendre
lumineuse et éclatante ou bien elle l'étale violemment
avec audace pour la transformer en mélodie visuelle qui se
répercute en écho.
L'art de Helen
Khal est un art semi abstrait, parcouru d'évocations d'horizons,
de soleils, de lunes et de paysages. Helen Khal qui au début
de sa carrière peignait le figuratif, s'est mise dans les
années 60 à depouiller les formes de leur chair, de
leur consistance et à les transformer en squelettes de verre,
diaphanes, traversés et baignés de lumière.
Et peu à peu elle se concentre sur les tons joyeux et calmes
qu'elle répartit de façon géométrique,
comme les couches géologiques ou les fils de chaîne
d'un tapis. Cette structure horizontale aux lignes équilibrées
en longueur et en largeur finit par s'élever vers les couches
de l'atmosphère dans ses oeuvres récentes. Alors le
vaste espace aérien se déploie au-dessus d'étroites
bandes colorées évoquant tantôt un horizon marin,
tantôt un horizon désertique.
Dans les années
70, peut-être sous l'influence de l'enseignement qu'elle dispense
à l'Université Américaine, Helen Khal revient
au figuratif. Ses formes sont maintenant compactes afin de s'harmoniser
avec la couleur, car la couleur enrichit la forme de même
que la forme renforce l'expression de la couleur.
Ceci ne veut
pas dire que ses nouvelles toiles sont abstraites. Bien qu'inspirés
par la nature, les arcs-en-ciel plantés dans l'espace, les
surfaces horizontales sous des rectangles verticaux, les courbes
inclinées, tout cela représente comme des visions
évocatrices de plaines ou de falaises mystérieuses.
Néanmoins
l'élément prédominant dans la peinture de Helen
Khal reste l'évocation de l'ardeur brûlante du soleil
Translated to English:
Helen Khal has
a special liking for diaphanous, ethereal color. It is indeed her
only concern. Recently, however, she has introduced in her canvases
a structure that enables bright colors to express something instead
of using them as a pretext for a chromatic entertainment.
She was born
in 1923 in Allentown, USA. She studied at the Lebanese Academy of
Fine Arts between 1946 and 1950, and afterwards at the Art Students'
League in New York. In 1955 she took up residence in Lebanon where
she devoted herself entirely to her painting. At the beginning her
works denote a double attraction to form and color and an interest
in both oriental and western atmosphere. Later on, however, she
was captivated by the light of the Mediterranean coast, and color
then became her major preoccupation. She either vaporizes it, filters
it to make it luminous and sparkling, or she spreads it with force
and courage in an attempt to transform it into a reverberating visual
melody.
Helen Khal's
art is semi-abstract, evocative of horizons, suns, moons, and landscapes.
At the beginning of her career she was a figurative painter but
began in the sixties to strip the forms of their flesh and their
texture, to transform them into glass skeletons, translucent and
soaked with light. Gradually she began to concentrate on gay and
calm shades which she applied in a geometric pattern, similar to
that of the earth's strata or that of the warps in a carpet. This
horizontal arrangement with lines balanced in length and breadth
rises towards the strata of the atmosphere in her later works. The
vast air space stretches above narrow colored areas, connotating
now an horizon at sea, now an horizon in the desert.
But in the seventies,
and perhaps under the influence of her art teaching at the American
University, Helen Khal returned to figurative art. Her forms are
now compact to be in harmony with color. Indeed, color reinforces
form in as much as form gives more presence to color. This is not
to say that her recent paintings are abstract. Although inspired
by nature, the rainbows spanning the sky, the horizontal surfaces
under vertical rectangles and the sloping curves all represent evocative
visions of mysterious plains or cliffs.
But above all,
the dominant element in Helen Khal's painting is the fiery intensity
of the sun.
Bouquet of flowers 36 x 51cm
►►
Some of the artist's artwork
Contact: editorial@onefineart.com
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