Simone Fattal

This superbly produced publication gathers over 100 watercolors made between 1972 and 2016 by Paris- and California-based Lebanese artist and publisher Simone Fattal (born 1942). Combining painting and collage, these works range from abstractions to near-abstract depictions of gardens and biomorphic forms. Fattal studied philosophy at the Ecole des Lettres, Beirut, and began painting in the late 1960s, eventually fleeing Beirut in 1980 with the outbreak of the civil war. Having moved to California, Fattal founded the Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to innovative literature. In 1988, she returned to art after enrolling at the Art Institute of San Francisco. Here, reproductions of works are preceded by a discussion with Hans Ulrich Obrist in which Fattal ruminates on her childhood in Damascus, her earliest encounters with modernist and postwar art in Europe, her sculptural work and the themes that inspire her affinity for watercolor.

Published for the artist's first solo exhibition at an American museum, this catalog highlights a selection of the more than 200 works by Paris- and California-based Lebanese artist and publisher Simone Fattal (born 1942).

Over the past 40 years, Fattal has made work encompassing abstract and figurative ceramics, bronzes, paintings, watercolors and collages. These works draw from a range of sources, including war narratives, landscape painting, ancient history, mythology and Sufi poetry, to explore the impact of displacement as well as the politics of archeology and excavation.

The first catalog on her work to be published in the United States, Works and Days features a selection of color plates tracing the arc of Fattal’s career from 1969 to the present, as well as an essay by Ruba Katrib, the exhibition curator.