Fatima El Hajj

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Fatima El-Hajj is a prominent Lebanese painter celebrated for her masterful layering of colour and texture on her canvas. Born in 1953, she spent her childhood in the coastal village of Rmeileh, near Saida, South Lebanon, her early surroundings heavily influenced her artistic vision. She graduated in 1973 from the Lebanese University’s Institut des Beaux-Arts, Inba, and pursued her studies in the Soviet Union, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leningrad, nowadays Saint Petersburg, and in France, at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. El-Hajj is known for her luminous and enchanted landscapes. She says that “Amine el-Bacha was my master to think and Shafic Abboud my master to act.” “As a colourist, she does not neglect the effects of texture. The movement, light and shapes suggested in her paintings beautifully merge together, sometimes bringing the work on the verge of abstraction”, writes Thierry Savatier. She was awarded the International Picasso Award in 1985 and her works have been widely exhibited across Europe and the Arab world.