DUBAI: Lebanese abstract artist Nadia Saikali seems to be one of those rare people who manages to be both scientific and spiritual.
Saikali, who was born in 1936, has led a remarkable life. She taught at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts and the Lebanese University, got married twice (to a Welshman and a Frenchman), exhibited her work internationally (from Brazil to Iran), designed furniture, and has a strong interest in Buddhism, geography and geology.
Nadia Saikali, 'Metamorphoses' (1986). (Museum of Institut du Monde Arabe)
“She is not ‘just’ an artist … she contributed to the art ecosystem in Lebanon,” the co-director of the upcoming Beirut Museum of Art (BeMA), Juliana Khalaf Salhab, tells Arab News. “One of her students (in Lebanon), the well-known painter Jamil Molaeb, said that she was ‘a free-spirited teacher,’ so she didn’t take art so seriously and wasn’t strict about classical art training; she wanted artists to find their own inner spirit.”
As for her own work, which will be displayed at BeMA, Saikali was a colorist with a scientific bent. As a child, she would buy supplies for her father’s dentistry clinic, and those materials reportedly informed her later practice. For instance, she produced kinetic art, combining fiberglass and electricity.
Nadia Saikali, 'Empreinte autoportrait Ile sanctuaire' (1986). (Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Claude Lemand)
In her textured paintings, Saikali thoughtfully experimented with color and gestures, portraying otherworldly scenes of nature and astrology with a touch of freedom and sensuality.
“She wanted the audience to go beyond the painting and the visuals, and to feel emotions,” notes Salhab.
In the mid-1970s, Saikali ended up living in France “by mistake.” She was training in Paris when the civil war in Lebanon suddenly broke out in 1975. She has remained in France since, and has consistently received coverage in the national press there. But, she has also continued to showcase her work in her homeland.
Nadia Saikali, 'Silex Millénaire' (1983). (Courtesy of Claude and France Lemand)
For someone who has accomplished so much, Saikali’s name is perhaps not as well-known these days as it should be.
“I think most artists of her generation kind of disappeared from the narrative, because during the war everyone was forgotten, and after the war, people were thinking about other things,” explains Salhab. “Now, our generation is trying to revive that narrative. And I think, little by little, she will become famous again.”
