Nadia Saikali

Nadia Saikali was born in Beirut in 1936 and stands among the pioneering figures of Lebanese abstract art. She completed her foundational training at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, graduating in 1956, before pursuing advanced studies in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the École des Arts Décoratifs, where she worked under Henri Goetz, Michel Durand, and Donnot Seydoux. This dual formation — rooted in Beirut and refined in Paris — shaped a practice that moves fluidly across Abstract Expressionism, kinetic art, and sustained experiments with light.

Saikali's early institutional recognition came in 1968, when her work Rampant Sun was awarded the Sursock Museum Prize at the museum's 8th Salon d'Automne in Beirut — a milestone that placed her firmly within the cultural life of a city then at the center of Arab modernism. Her work entered the collection of Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, an early marker of international reach, and has since been acquired by the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, one of the foremost institutional collections of modern and contemporary Arab art.

Her relationship with Galerie Claude Lemand in Paris has been the primary axis of her exhibition career in recent decades. Solo presentations there include Timeless Spaces, Abstract Expressions in 2016, Paintings in 2018, and Ferveur in 2023 — a sequence that reflects both the gallery's sustained commitment to her work and the continued vitality of her practice across successive years. In 2025, the exhibition Nadia Saikali and Her Contemporaries, organized by the Barjeel Art Foundation at Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah, brought her work into dialogue with peers from the broader Arab modernist generation, drawing renewed critical attention to her place within that history. Coverage in outlets including The National and AboutHer.com has accompanied this renewed visibility, underscoring the timeliness of reassessing a career whose ambition and consistency reward close attention.