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拍品专文
New York-based Palestinian artist Samia Halaby is one of the Arab world’s most important contemporary painters and a leading figure in the international abstract art scene. Born in Jerusalem in 1936, Halaby was displaced from her homeland during the mass displacement of Palestinians following the 1948 Nakba. Her childhood of constant moving and instability would manifest in a politically charged artistic career and her ongoing commitment to the Palestinian cause.
Halaby’s artistic practice has evolved into Abstract Expressionism, characterised by her vibrant kaleidoscopic landscapes that blend geometric elements of early Islamic architecture with the austere aesthetics of Russian Constructivism. In 1964, when Halaby travelled to Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Palestine as part of the Kansas City Art Institute grant, the artist encountered important architectural landmarks and heritage sites. At the same time, her fascination with Soviet Socialist ideologies introduced her to influential Russian avant-garde artists, further shaping her creative vision.
Perhaps, one of the most influential sources of inspiration in Halaby’s oeuvre came from books on geometry used by engineers. Approaching art through the lens of science, Halaby achieved her signature style by observing the reflections of metal strips and recreating their visual effects in her work. She takes on this exploration of the intersection between art and science extended into the digital format, in which she pioneered a series of computer-based kinetic art pieces after completing computer programming in the 1980s.
The two featured works, Half Night from 1976 and New York from 1978, are part of Halaby’s Diagonal Flight series, produced during her residency in New York and her professorship at the Yale School of Art. This decade was marked by her deepening interest in geometrical abstractions in her artistic evolution. In the series, Halaby predominantly used diagonal lines and contrasting bands of colour to evoke a sense of movement, creating a never-ending continuum between volume and surface, light and shadows. Reflecting on the symmetry observed in nature, Halaby’s works in the series often exhibit recurring geometric bodies and lines that also echo her earlier influences from the geometry of Islamic art.
In Half Night, Halaby arranged diagonal lines of varying thickness, painted in a subdued colour palette accented by occasional bursts of bright orange and turquoise that look almost fluorescent against the dark background. Multiple parallel diagonal strokes stretch across the work from edge to edge, their movement disrupted by two blood-orange lines. The lower half of the square canvas is dominated by blacks and blues, representing “half” night, while the upper half features tonal variations of greys and browns, suggestive of the transition from darkness to light.
In New York, the pattern of lines creates an effect of infinite flow across the canvas. Inspired by the imagery of railway stations in New York, Halaby recreated these scenes with elongated vertical brushstrokes that mimic the structure of train tracks enhanced by metallic sheens. Compositionally, she arranged the lines to reminisce light refracting through a prism, a characteristic of her Diagonal Flight series. The colour palette consists of a gradient from browns and blacks to lighter tones of pink, coral, and yellow, applied in textured brushstrokes that add three-dimensionality to the painting.
Halaby’s artistic practice has evolved into Abstract Expressionism, characterised by her vibrant kaleidoscopic landscapes that blend geometric elements of early Islamic architecture with the austere aesthetics of Russian Constructivism. In 1964, when Halaby travelled to Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Palestine as part of the Kansas City Art Institute grant, the artist encountered important architectural landmarks and heritage sites. At the same time, her fascination with Soviet Socialist ideologies introduced her to influential Russian avant-garde artists, further shaping her creative vision.
Perhaps, one of the most influential sources of inspiration in Halaby’s oeuvre came from books on geometry used by engineers. Approaching art through the lens of science, Halaby achieved her signature style by observing the reflections of metal strips and recreating their visual effects in her work. She takes on this exploration of the intersection between art and science extended into the digital format, in which she pioneered a series of computer-based kinetic art pieces after completing computer programming in the 1980s.
The two featured works, Half Night from 1976 and New York from 1978, are part of Halaby’s Diagonal Flight series, produced during her residency in New York and her professorship at the Yale School of Art. This decade was marked by her deepening interest in geometrical abstractions in her artistic evolution. In the series, Halaby predominantly used diagonal lines and contrasting bands of colour to evoke a sense of movement, creating a never-ending continuum between volume and surface, light and shadows. Reflecting on the symmetry observed in nature, Halaby’s works in the series often exhibit recurring geometric bodies and lines that also echo her earlier influences from the geometry of Islamic art.
In Half Night, Halaby arranged diagonal lines of varying thickness, painted in a subdued colour palette accented by occasional bursts of bright orange and turquoise that look almost fluorescent against the dark background. Multiple parallel diagonal strokes stretch across the work from edge to edge, their movement disrupted by two blood-orange lines. The lower half of the square canvas is dominated by blacks and blues, representing “half” night, while the upper half features tonal variations of greys and browns, suggestive of the transition from darkness to light.
In New York, the pattern of lines creates an effect of infinite flow across the canvas. Inspired by the imagery of railway stations in New York, Halaby recreated these scenes with elongated vertical brushstrokes that mimic the structure of train tracks enhanced by metallic sheens. Compositionally, she arranged the lines to reminisce light refracting through a prism, a characteristic of her Diagonal Flight series. The colour palette consists of a gradient from browns and blacks to lighter tones of pink, coral, and yellow, applied in textured brushstrokes that add three-dimensionality to the painting.