Simone Fattal

Exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 18 September 2026 – 24 January 2027

A Lebanese-American artist born in Damascus and based in Paris for many years, Simone Fattal (1942–) is a tireless explorer of materials and techniques. She produces a multifaceted body of work drawing on a wide range of literary, mythological and historical sources.

It was in Beirut that she first took up painting, inspired by the landscapes. Forced to leave Lebanon in 1980 due to the war, she settled in Sausalito with her partner, the artist and poet Etel Adnan (1925–2021). Simone Fattal then temporarily set aside painting to devote herself to founding Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to poetry and experimental writing, primarily feminist works. Then, at the turn of the 1990s, she took up ceramics. Her archaic, anthropomorphic or animal-like figures draw their inspiration from the mythological tales of the Mediterranean basin. Alongside her sculpture and collage work, painting re-emerged in the 2010s, accompanied by works on paper: colourful watercolours and black ink drawings inspired by calligraphy or nature.

This catalogue of the first exhibition dedicated to Simone Fattal in a Parisian museum pays tribute to a unique artist, a true free spirit, and bears witness to the richness and scope of a body of work that is constantly evolving.