For Frieze Masters 2024, Richard Saltoun Gallery will present the first solo presentation in the UK dedicated to pioneering Lebanese Surrealist artist, Juliana SERAPHIM (1934 - 2005), with a selection of key works from the 1960-90s. Seraphim was recently included in two landmark exhibitions Arab presence: Modern Art and Decolonisation, Paris 1908-1988 at the Museé d’Art Moderne, Paris 2024, and Beirut and The Golden Sixties, Biennale de Lyon, 2022, together with contemporaries Etel Adnan and Hueguette Caland.
Her work, deeply personal and spiritually infused, resonates with the broader Surrealist engagement with memory, identity, and the subconscious. She was born in Jaffa, Palestine, and her early life was profoundly shaped by the 1948 Palestinian exodus (al-Nakba), which forced her family to flee to Beirut. This experience of displacement left a lasting impact on her art. In Beirut, she studied at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts and worked with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). In the late 1950s, she continued her art studies in Florence, Paris, and Madrid, where she began developing a unique Surrealist language that blended Western influences with Middle Eastern cultural motifs.
She became a key figure in the Middle Eastern art scene from the 1960s to the 1990s, known for her fusion of Surrealism and feminist themes. As one of the first female Lebanese artists to gain international acclaim, she represented Lebanon in major biennials, including Alexandria (1962), Paris (1963, 1969), and São Paulo (1965).
Seraphim’s work stands out for its deeply personal exploration of exile and identity through a distinctly female perspective. Art critic Helen Khal observed in 1987 that Seraphim’s art "voices the private desires of her own womanhood," a theme that resonates throughout her oeuvre. Her paintings typically feature layers of erotic and dreamlike imagery, with fantastical cityscapes and characters morphing into plants and flowers. She drew inspiration from the faded frescoes of winged beings on the ceiling of her grandfather's monastery in Jerusalem, infusing her work with a sense of spirituality and personal memory.
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