Simone Fattal: Watercolours

This superbly produced publication gathers over 100 watercolors made between 1972 and 2016 by Paris- and California-based Lebanese artist and publisher Simone Fattal (born 1942). Combining painting and collage, these works range from abstractions to near-abstract depictions of gardens and biomorphic forms. Fattal studied philosophy at the Ecole des Lettres, Beirut, and began painting in the late 1960s, eventually fleeing Beirut in 1980 with the outbreak of the civil war. Having moved to California, Fattal founded the Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to innovative literature. In 1988, she returned to art after enrolling at the Art Institute of San Francisco. Here, reproductions of works are preceded by a discussion with Hans Ulrich Obrist in which Fattal ruminates on her childhood in Damascus, her earliest encounters with modernist and postwar art in Europe, her sculptural work and the themes that inspire her affinity for watercolor.