SAMIA HALABY

Halaby is Palestinian-American artist, abstract painter, activist and scholar. She was educated in the 1950s in the American Midwest, at a time when abstract expressionism was popular, but female abstract painters were often overlooked. In the 1960s she started working with intense colors and shapes to construct minimal patterns, that repeat and spread over the surface of the canvas. Early on in her practice, her paintings left the rectangular stretched fabric, to become shaped canvases, three-dimensional mobiles, or computer-generated visuals. She constantly foregrounded works and techniques and, in retrospect, was at the avant-garde of artistic production throughout her career.