Juliana Seraphim

Juliana Seraphim was born in Jaffa in 1934 where she lived until the 1948 Palestinian exodus (al-Nakba) when her family sought refuge in Lebanon. Having been deeply affected by the event, she worked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Beirut in 1952 for several years. She began painter under the tutelage of the Lebanese painter Jean Khalifé and exhibited her work in his studio. She then enrolled at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts and in 1959, she spent a year in Florence before moving to Madrid to study at the Royal Academy of San Fernando on a scholarship in 1960. She went on to exhibit widely in Beirut and abroad and represented Lebanon in three international biennials: Alexandria (1962), Paris (1963, 1969) and Sāo Paulo (1965). During and after the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), she shuttled between Paris and Beirut until her death in 2005. Her work features in private and public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of New York; Museum of the city of Viarregio; Musée du suréalisme, Paris; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; Sursock Museum, Beirut; the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut; and the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.