Infectious joie de vivre suffuses the color-drenched art and the unconventional life of the celebrated Lebanese artist, Huguette Caland.

Caland once said, “I love every minute of my life. I squeeze it like an orange, and I eat the peel, because I don’t want to miss anything,” – a statement that fully expresses the long and adventurous life that Caland lived.

Born into an elite political Lebanese family, Caland was the daughter of Bechara El-Khoury, Lebanon’s first president after the country threw off the yoke of French colonial rule in 1943 and gained its independence. El-Khoury was to rule until 1952, at which time he was forced to resign after a turbulent tenure.

It was perhaps because of the constraints of her position in Lebanese society that prevented Caland from beginning a serious career as an artist until well into her thirties, yet she enrolled at the American University of

Yet once she began, she became a forceful and unique artist and one of the earliest avowed Feminists, perpetually challenging notions surrounding perceived, appropriate roles for women in society, and definitions of female erotic beauty and desirability. Caland’s experimentation in many mediums styles and techniques allowed her to produce a prodigious body of work, which is only today – being reevaluated on its merits

As The New York Times wrote, at the time of Caland’s death in 2019, “As an artist, Ms. Caland moved freely among oils, ink, sculptures, and textiles, between representational figures, abstractions, and line drawings. Her pieces were voluptuous, organic, whimsical, erotic, exuberant, sometimes cartoonlike, but most often decidedly feminist.”

Her most famous work was Bribes de Corps (“Body Parts”) a series from the 1970s, showing fleshy, curvaceous forms that resembled parts of the female anatomy.

This explicitly erotic work was not immediately accepted (even in Paris where it was exhibited) and it was not until late in life did Caland’s work writ large begin to be reevaluated and receive full acceptance and recognition. In fact, it was not until the year she died, 2019, that she receive a long overdue solo exhibition at a museum, when her work was showcased at the Tate St. Ives Museum in Cornwall, England.