Description

Helen Khal was born in Pennsylvania to a family of Lebanese descent. In her early age she was confined to bed by an illness, which is when she started drawing. She attended the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut between 1946 and 1948. She returned shortly to the US but she finally settled down in Lebanon. Helen Khal co-founded a gallery called Gallery One which was the first contemporary art gallery in the Middle East. The artist had her first solo exhibitions in Lebanon and the US. Besides that, she gave lectures at various universities and also wrote about art in periodicals. Her paintings are charged with emotion and, in that sense, they are expressionist works. Khal developed this style after having experienced personal loss and grief. The mystical application of colours and their radiation of light is softer than those of Mark Rothko who was also driven to express tragedy in his works. Blue sun is a later work of the artist’s oeuvre and while the shape of the sun is recognizable the colouring adds a personal touch to it.