Simone Fattal

Influenced by her experiences of war and migration, Paris-based Syrian-American artist Simone Fattal (born 1942) has transcended boundaries like few other artists of her generation. Born in Damascus, she grew up in Lebanon. After studying philosophy at the École des Lettres in Beirut and the Sorbonne in Paris, she returned to Beirut in 1969 and began to paint. In 1980 she fled the civil war and settled in California with her lifelong partner, the artist and poet Etel Adnan.
Fattal's collages combine pieces from her private archive with historical events in the Arab world. These works suggest the fragility of an identity shaped by migration. Her more abstract ceramic sculptures reference ancient myths and archaeological finds.
Combining essays by long-time associates and new scholarly contributions from international authors, this first comprehensive monograph focuses on Simone Fattal’s role as an artist and as a publisher of Post-Apollo Press.

Over the last 50 years, Lebanese American artist Simone Fattal's (born 1942) multifaceted practice has explored the impact of displacement as well as the episteme of archeology and mythology, drawing from a range of sources including war narratives, landscape painting, ancient history and poetry. Inspired by her visit to the archeological sites of Pompeii, Fattal debuts a new body of sculpture and ceramics blending history with memory, grappling with the loss of time while revealing its repetitions. Says Fattal of Pompeii's significance, "the place has not been destroyed by time, but by a moment ... there are fragments of all periods mingled together ... Egypt is present, but also Syria and Asia Minor. But with all this diversity and differences, it seems that all lived together in harmony."

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 her 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.