Portrait of Samia Halaby
A young artist is searching for a way to express herself; she is looking at a Petrus Christus painting, “The Virgin and Child in a Gothic Interior”. Her eye is drawn to a detail — a solitary piece of fruit — an orange depicted with exquisite care that sits bathed in light on a windowsill. It proves to be a moment of revelation, opening up a new pathway of artistic expression. This is how the artist Samia Halaby describes her encounter with the painting during an interview in the Ayyam Gallery in London where she is exhibiting her latest work.
Halaby, who was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, is widely credited with inspiring the new school of abstraction in contemporary Arab art. Parallel to her artistic career, she is an active political campaigner for Palestine, as well as a scholar who has been instrumental in the documentation of Palestinian art, publishing her landmark text “Liberation Art of Palestine: Palestinian Painting and Sculpture in the Second Half of the 20th Century,” in 2002.
Halaby, who was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, is widely credited with inspiring the new school of abstraction in contemporary Arab art. Parallel to her artistic career, she is an active political campaigner for Palestine, as well as a scholar who has been instrumental in the documentation of Palestinian art, publishing her landmark text “Liberation Art of Palestine: Palestinian Painting and Sculpture in the Second Half of the 20th Century,” in 2002.
