Helen Khal
Lebanese-American painter and art critic.
Helen Khal grew up in a Lebanese family in Pennsylvania. In 1946, she went to live in Lebanon for two years, studying painting at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut, and meeting the artists Shafic Abboud (1926 – 2004) and Yvette Achkar (born in 1928) and the sculptor Michel Basbous (born in 1921). After her marriage to the poet Yusuf al-Khal, she continued her studies at the Art Students League in New York, but it was not until 1960 that she had her first exhibition, at the Galerie Alecco Saab in Beirut. Her style became increasingly expressionist and emotional following the deaths of her mother and brother. In 1963, she co-founded Gallery One, the first gallery of its kind not only in Lebanon but in the whole of the eastern Arab region.
Lebanese-American painter and art critic.
Helen Khal grew up in a Lebanese family in Pennsylvania. In 1946, she went to live in Lebanon for two years, studying painting at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut, and meeting the artists Shafic Abboud (1926 – 2004) and Yvette Achkar (born in 1928) and the sculptor Michel Basbous (born in 1921). After her marriage to the poet Yusuf al-Khal, she continued her studies at the Art Students League in New York, but it was not until 1960 that she had her first exhibition, at the Galerie Alecco Saab in Beirut. Her style became increasingly expressionist and emotional following the deaths of her mother and brother. In 1963, she co-founded Gallery One, the first gallery of its kind not only in Lebanon but in the whole of the eastern Arab region.
She became a teacher at the American University of Beirut and an art critic for the Daily Star and Monday Morning. In 1987, she authored the influential book, The Woman Artist in Lebanon. She returned to Lebanon in the 1990s where she continued to write art criticism.
Her other one-woman 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