Helen Khal

Helen Khal (1923 – 2009) was an American artist and critic of Lebanese descent.

Early life
Helen Khal was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania to a Lebanese American family from Tripoli, Lebanon. She started her painting career at the age of 21; when illness forced house rest, she began to draw. On a visit to Lebanon in 1946 she met and married a young Lebanese poet, Yusuf al-Khal (they later divorced), and remained in the country to study art at ALBA from 1946 to 1948. She returned to the United States briefly but in 1973, after moving back to Lebanon, she established Lebanon's first permanent art gallery, Gallery One.

Career
With the encouragement of her colleagues, notably well-known Lebanese artist Aref Rayess, Khal pursued her art and she held her first individual exhibition in 1960 in Galerie Alecco Saab in Beirut. Her other one-woman shows took place at Galerie Trois Feuilles d'Or, Beirut (1965); Galerie Manoug, Beirut (1968); at the First National Bank, Allentown, Pennsylvania (1969); in Kaslik, Lebanon (1970); at the Contact Art Gallery, Beirut (1972, 1974 and 1975) and at the Bolivar Gallery in Kingston, Jamaica in 1975. Her work also appeared in the Biennales of Alexandria and São Paulo.

She also taught art at the American University of Beirut from 1967 to 1976 and at the Lebanese American University from 1997 to 1980. She inspired many other artists and her "background concerning art is fully enriched by the many wonders of the world of art."

Helen Khal was also recognized as an author and critic. "From 1966 to 1974, Helen Khal was Art Critic to two Lebanese periodicals, The Daily Star and Monday Morning. She also wrote a number of publications in the Middle East and the USA and frequently lectured on art."

A series of 22 lectures that she gave was collected and published as a book titled The Woman Artist in Lebanon.

Death
Khal died in 2009.

Legacy
Khal's work was included in the 1994 exhibition Forces of Change at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. her work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou. In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.