Short Biography of Samia A. Halaby

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

July, 1996

Samia A. Halaby

Samia A. Halaby was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, in 1936. In 1948, Israeli aggression forced their emigration to Beirut and from their her family emigrated to the US. There her art education took place in Midwestern Universities. She taught in American universities for eighteen years ending with ten years at the Yale School of Art. She has lectured as visiting artists at many distinguished schools. In recent years she has added work with electronic media. She programs kinetic computer paintings and performs them live with musicians. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in many museum collections among them the Guggenheim Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Institute Du Monde Arab.

Halaby makes analytically abstract paintings which reflect the cacophony of present reality. this work first developed in isolation along complex geometric lines. Afterwards international traditions such as Cubism and Constructivism as well as such American painters as Stuart Davis and Mark Tobey asserted their influence. The themes narrate the motion and speed of our environment. They help us to understand the signals of pleasure and danger of a city or the complexities of modern information. For example one painting titled "One Yard Pas The Shingle Factory" alludes to the jangle of manufacture while it pays homage to Marcel Duchamp. Halaby works with oil on canvas as much as with drawing media on paper. Halaby exhibited some very large works the most sizable of which measure six by twenty-four feet. Halaby has also worked with the print media. As guest artist at the Tamarind Lithography workshop she produced fourteen editions. In recent years she has worked closely with Sheila Marbain at Maurel Studios to develop a method for silk screen monotypes.

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