Born in Beirut in 1916, Saloua Raouda Choucair’s prolific career spans almost six decades, and is defined by her tirelessly ambitious and experimental disposition to form and space. A trailblazer in many ways, Choucair was one of modern Lebanon’s leading female sculptors, working in a medium that was often considered secondary to painting. Though she produced hand-crafted objects from a young age, Choucair’s formal pursuit of art began with training under renowned impressionist painter Omar Onsi in 1942. It would be twenty years until she sold her first piece, and until she was nearing 100 years of age that she would enjoy global renown.

In 1943, Choucair travelled to Egypt in search of artistic inspiration, however its museums were closed in the midst of World War II; instead, she turned to the streets and mosques of Cairo, through which she became captivated by Islamic art and its essentiality of line and curve. Choucair’s oeuvre would come to be characterised by geometricity, harmony, and repetition, as inspired by naturally occurring forms and yet governed by mathematical precision. Her sharp intellect would enable her to employ skills of measurement, observation, formulation, and modification to reimagine simple shapes into something formally complex.

From 1948 to 1952, Choucair relocated to Paris where she attended the École des Beaux-Art. A friend of Choucair's, Najla Tannus ‘Akrawi, recalls accompanying her to a pivotal lecture by artist Fernand Léger, who claimed, “Don’t assume that abstract art is far from nature; it isn’t” (Jessica Morgan [ed.], Saloua Raouda Choucair, London 2013, p. 45). Choucair would go on to join Léger’s atelier, as well as the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, which offered an alternative to her more orthodox studies and allowed her to absorb the dynamic spirit of the Parisian art scene. During a trip to Marseille, Choucair encountered Le Corbusier’s developing Unité d'Habitation, which proposed an experimental solution to the complexities of space and form through modularity. This architectural sensibility would become manifest from her earliest works in wood and stone, which she became devoted to from 1957 onwards.

Exploiting the endless potential of a singular piece of wood or stone, Choucair achieved with mastery a unique ability to oscillate between manmade and natural, industrial and organic, static and fluid. Owing to her fascination with puzzles and equations, Choucair’s visual vernacular is marked by a distinct kineticism and tangibility; much like Louise Nevelson and Barbara Hepworth, she plays with the transformational quality of line and tests the staticism of sculpture. Belonging to her mid-1970s Dual series, which focused on existential questions of separation and unity in a time of political turmoil in Lebanon, Secret of the Cube consists of two contrasting wooden parts interlocked in an embrace. Without revealing a singular solution, this enigmatic form was returned to tirelessly by the artist, with around ten variations existing in different materials such as metal and glazed terracotta. The work is exemplary of Choucair’s practice of the ‘closed form,’ which her artistic contemporary Helen Khal (lot 8) described as “distinguished by the absolute containment of energy of an object or image within a defined inner space.” Much like the architecture of Islam, the closed form invites an intimate viewer interaction, representing a “physical expression of inviolate introspection, of an inner spiritual energy” (ibid., 124).

In addition to its remarkable and rare provenance directly from the Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation, Secret of the Cube is one of Choucair’s only early wood sculptures to appear on the market. 2024 was a particularly significant year for the artist, with the Foundation opening its doors in Ras El Metn, Lebanon, to preserve and showcase the artist’s work and archives. Last year also marked Choucair’s inaugural showcase at the Venice Biennale, as well as participation in international exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris and Turner Contemporary, Margate. A testament to her success, Choucair was the first Arab female artist to have a major solo retrospective in the UK, entitled Saloua Raouda Choucair at the Tate Modern in 2013, and her works have been acquired by institutions globally, including the MoMA, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Guggenheim Bilbao, to name a few.