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拍品专文
"Yesterday is a transitional painting where instead of painting the color stripes with brush marks that are perpendicular to the stripe, I used a little squeegee to spread the oil paint in the direction of the stripe. This method introduced possibilities of painting wet into wet and thus new variations in the rendering of space." - Samia Halaby (M. Farhat, Samia Halaby: Five Decades of Painting and Innovation, London 2010).
In Yesterday, Samia Halaby transforms the diagonal line into an instrument of movement, creating a visual field suspended between motion and stillness. Across the expansive canvas, successive bands of colour and line shift progressively in direction, density and intensity, generating a rhythm that carries the eye from left to right and produces a fleeting sense of duration. Rather than depicting an object in motion, Halaby constructs the conditions through which movement can be perceived through the accumulation and subtle variation of the painted marks themselves. The composition unfolds from soft grey passages and a fine yellow delineation at the left; the bands become increasingly concentrated as the palette moves through purple, brown, black, red and orange, intensifying both the chromatic and spatial activity of the surface. The changing colours and intervals between the lines create successive states of light and space. A near-vertical line toward the right introduces a moment of interruption, slowing the rhythm before the lighter tones beyond it suggests continuation. The movement therefore remains unresolved, extending conceptually beyond the edges of the canvas and evoking an expansive, cyclical conception of space and time. The title, Yesterday, adds a further temporal dimension, what appears to unfold before the viewer is simultaneously already situated in the past, while the softened transitions between colour and form recall the instability of memory, in which one moment gradually dissolves into another.
Yesterday is one of the largest works from Halaby’s celebrated Diagonal Flight series to come to the market. Developed between 1974 and 1979, the series emerged from the artist’s sustained investigation into geometry, movement and the relationship between surface and volume. Having studied architecture as well as painting, Halaby was particularly attentive to the expressive possibilities of direction. The horizontal could suggest stability, while the vertical could imply hierarchy. The diagonal offered something different, a dynamic axis capable of suggesting movement, distance and flight.
The concept was also connected to Halaby’s memories of the Mediterranean, particularly her childhood experiences of Jaffa and Beirut. Looking toward the horizon, where sea and sky appeared to meet in seemingly infinite space, she wondered: “Do we have sufficient knowledge yet to understand what our eyes tell us when we look at the boundary, the invisible line, between a curved surface and the distance behind it?” (I. Bushnaq and S. Halaby, Samia Halaby, Beirut 2006).
Exploring this experience of infinity, distance and time, Samia also began experimenting with her painting technique. As she explains in the opening quotation, Yesterday represents a transitional moment in her process, when she replaced the perpendicular brushstroke with a small squeegee, pulling the oil paint in the direction of each stripe. Working wet into wet allowed neighbouring colours to interact and produced subtle variations in tone, density and depth. The physical movement of the paint therefore parallels the imagined movement within the composition. The tool does not simply describe space, it helps create it. This relationship between process and perception is central to Halaby's practice. Her abstraction is rooted in close observation of how the eye understands light, distance, movement and form. The apparent simplicity of Yesterday, its restricted vocabulary of diagonal bands, therefore, conceals a complex investigation into how a static surface can suggest time and motion.
Yesterday was first exhibited in the group exhibition Stories from the Levant at Ayyam Gallery, Dubai, in 2009. It was subsequently included in Lasting Impressions: Samia Halaby, the artist's major retrospective at Sharjah Art Museum in 2023–24. Its continued exhibition history reflects the enduring importance of the Diagonal Flight paintings within Halaby's practice.
More than four decades after its creation, this work remains remarkably immediate. Its lines seem to move while remaining fixed, its colours suggest change while occupying a static surface. Between movement and stillness, memory and the present, Halaby creates a painting in which looking itself becomes a form of movement.
New York-based Palestinian artist Samia Halaby is one of the Arab world’s most important contemporary painters and a leading figure in the international abstract art scene. Born in Jerusalem in 1936, Halaby was displaced from her homeland during the mass displacement of Palestinians following the 1948 Nakba. Her childhood of constant moving and instability would manifest in a politically charged artistic career and her ongoing commitment to the Palestinian cause. She was later raised in the United States, where she began her professional career as an artist and educator after obtaining a MFA in Painting from Indiana University in 1963. Between the 1960s and the late 1980s, Halaby taught at various universities in the United States. For a period of ten years, she held the distinction of being the first female associate professor at Yale University’s School of Art. In 1964, while serving as a faculty at the Kansas City Art Institute, Halaby received a research grant that allowed her to travel to the Eastern Mediterranean, during which she delved into the world of geometric abstraction present in the Islamic architecture of the region. By conducting experiments with various surface media that marked the beginning of a lifelong exploration into the principles of abstract art, she sought to understand the essence of reality and its enactment in material form. Heavily influenced by the abstract movements of cubism and futurism, Halaby is motivated by the belief that innovative approaches to painting create the potential for reconfiguring perceptions, not only in the realm of aesthetics but also as significant contributions to technological and social progress.
Halaby’s work is held in major institutional collections, including including Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, New York and Abu Dhabi; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; Institut du monde arabe, Paris, and British Museum, London. In 2024, Halaby’s work was also featured for the first time at the 60th Venice Biennale where she received a special mention from the Jury.
In Yesterday, Samia Halaby transforms the diagonal line into an instrument of movement, creating a visual field suspended between motion and stillness. Across the expansive canvas, successive bands of colour and line shift progressively in direction, density and intensity, generating a rhythm that carries the eye from left to right and produces a fleeting sense of duration. Rather than depicting an object in motion, Halaby constructs the conditions through which movement can be perceived through the accumulation and subtle variation of the painted marks themselves. The composition unfolds from soft grey passages and a fine yellow delineation at the left; the bands become increasingly concentrated as the palette moves through purple, brown, black, red and orange, intensifying both the chromatic and spatial activity of the surface. The changing colours and intervals between the lines create successive states of light and space. A near-vertical line toward the right introduces a moment of interruption, slowing the rhythm before the lighter tones beyond it suggests continuation. The movement therefore remains unresolved, extending conceptually beyond the edges of the canvas and evoking an expansive, cyclical conception of space and time. The title, Yesterday, adds a further temporal dimension, what appears to unfold before the viewer is simultaneously already situated in the past, while the softened transitions between colour and form recall the instability of memory, in which one moment gradually dissolves into another.
Yesterday is one of the largest works from Halaby’s celebrated Diagonal Flight series to come to the market. Developed between 1974 and 1979, the series emerged from the artist’s sustained investigation into geometry, movement and the relationship between surface and volume. Having studied architecture as well as painting, Halaby was particularly attentive to the expressive possibilities of direction. The horizontal could suggest stability, while the vertical could imply hierarchy. The diagonal offered something different, a dynamic axis capable of suggesting movement, distance and flight.
The concept was also connected to Halaby’s memories of the Mediterranean, particularly her childhood experiences of Jaffa and Beirut. Looking toward the horizon, where sea and sky appeared to meet in seemingly infinite space, she wondered: “Do we have sufficient knowledge yet to understand what our eyes tell us when we look at the boundary, the invisible line, between a curved surface and the distance behind it?” (I. Bushnaq and S. Halaby, Samia Halaby, Beirut 2006).
Exploring this experience of infinity, distance and time, Samia also began experimenting with her painting technique. As she explains in the opening quotation, Yesterday represents a transitional moment in her process, when she replaced the perpendicular brushstroke with a small squeegee, pulling the oil paint in the direction of each stripe. Working wet into wet allowed neighbouring colours to interact and produced subtle variations in tone, density and depth. The physical movement of the paint therefore parallels the imagined movement within the composition. The tool does not simply describe space, it helps create it. This relationship between process and perception is central to Halaby's practice. Her abstraction is rooted in close observation of how the eye understands light, distance, movement and form. The apparent simplicity of Yesterday, its restricted vocabulary of diagonal bands, therefore, conceals a complex investigation into how a static surface can suggest time and motion.
Yesterday was first exhibited in the group exhibition Stories from the Levant at Ayyam Gallery, Dubai, in 2009. It was subsequently included in Lasting Impressions: Samia Halaby, the artist's major retrospective at Sharjah Art Museum in 2023–24. Its continued exhibition history reflects the enduring importance of the Diagonal Flight paintings within Halaby's practice.
More than four decades after its creation, this work remains remarkably immediate. Its lines seem to move while remaining fixed, its colours suggest change while occupying a static surface. Between movement and stillness, memory and the present, Halaby creates a painting in which looking itself becomes a form of movement.
New York-based Palestinian artist Samia Halaby is one of the Arab world’s most important contemporary painters and a leading figure in the international abstract art scene. Born in Jerusalem in 1936, Halaby was displaced from her homeland during the mass displacement of Palestinians following the 1948 Nakba. Her childhood of constant moving and instability would manifest in a politically charged artistic career and her ongoing commitment to the Palestinian cause. She was later raised in the United States, where she began her professional career as an artist and educator after obtaining a MFA in Painting from Indiana University in 1963. Between the 1960s and the late 1980s, Halaby taught at various universities in the United States. For a period of ten years, she held the distinction of being the first female associate professor at Yale University’s School of Art. In 1964, while serving as a faculty at the Kansas City Art Institute, Halaby received a research grant that allowed her to travel to the Eastern Mediterranean, during which she delved into the world of geometric abstraction present in the Islamic architecture of the region. By conducting experiments with various surface media that marked the beginning of a lifelong exploration into the principles of abstract art, she sought to understand the essence of reality and its enactment in material form. Heavily influenced by the abstract movements of cubism and futurism, Halaby is motivated by the belief that innovative approaches to painting create the potential for reconfiguring perceptions, not only in the realm of aesthetics but also as significant contributions to technological and social progress.
Halaby’s work is held in major institutional collections, including including Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, New York and Abu Dhabi; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; Institut du monde arabe, Paris, and British Museum, London. In 2024, Halaby’s work was also featured for the first time at the 60th Venice Biennale where she received a special mention from the Jury.