Exhibition review: Saloua Raouda Choucair, Shanti Panchal

Forgive my ignorance, ladies and gentlemen, but I must confess that I had never heard of Saloua Raouda Choucair before the advance publicity of the Tate’s exhibition. She’s not in the Yale Dictionary of Art & Artists (always a useful reference book, but by no means infallible) and I don’t believe I’d ever seen her paintings or sculptures before this show. But I may have overlooked one somewhere in a mixed exhibition, for her work does resemble that of a dozen other artists of international Modernism, and even of a number of the British variety.

So why does Tate Modern now devote a solo show to her? Could it be because she is Lebanese (and we don’t see the work of many Lebanese artists in this country), female and has reached the distinguished age of 97? The fact that the Tate has recently acquired six works by her may also have something to do with it: one gifted by the Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation, two presented anonymously and three purchased by the Tate with funds from the Middle East and North Africa Acquisitions Committee. Suddenly Ms Choucair is hot property.

I have to say that I rather enjoyed her exhibition, which is not too large, but carefully arranged over four rooms. She was a pioneer of abstract art in the Middle East, but her work is rarely seen outside the Lebanon, and mingles indigenous influences with the inspiration of certain European artists. The exhibition begins with a tough-looking, schematised but not unbeguiling self-portrait dating from 1943. Around that time Choucair visited Cairo and discovered a new world of geometric pattern, calligraphic script and architecture that moved her deeply. Five years later she travelled to Paris to drink deep at Modernism’s fount, studying at the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, and more particularly with Léger.