Painting is like surfing, you are at the top of the wave and then a moment later in the hollow. There is no fear in these hollows, even when they never end. Instead, they balance your experience and release the artist's imagination.
- Yvette Achkar

The work of Lebanese artist Yvette Achkar embodies a strong sense of energy and vigour, a unique language developed from her experimentation with colour and a strive for the simplicity in abstraction. An abandonment of structure creates underlying tensions within her paintings, where forms clash with articulated strokes of colour without a defined plane of reference. Her execution and techniques emanate the vitality and spirit for which Achkar’s artistic practice has gained recognition, as a pioneer female artist at the forefront of the Lebanese modern art scene.

Born in Sao Paulo in 1928, Achkar has exhibited widely, including the recent US touring exhibition Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950-1980s (2020) at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University; Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Illinois; Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, New York; McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College and University of Michigan Museum of Art. Other exhibitions include the Biennales in Paris (1959, 1962), Alexandria (1967) and Baghdad (1984); Sharjah Museum (2016) and the Sursock Museum, Beirut (2019). Works by Achkar are held in public collections including the British Museum, London; Institut de Monde Arabe, Paris; Kuwait National Museum, Kuwait and Digne-Les-Bains Museum, France.