Mona Saudi

Mona Saudi was born in Amman, Jordan in 1945. She moved to Beirut in 1962 and held her first exhibition at the Café de la Presse in 1963 before leaving for Paris shortly afterwards to study sculpture at L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. She joined the atelier Colamarini where she learned to carve and spent time in the sculpture studios of Carrara, Italy. She left Paris for Amman in 1968 where she produced the book In Time of War: Childen Testify before returning to Beirut in 1969. She joined the art department of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and produced political posters and illustrated books for writers, including Ghassan Kanafani. She held solo exhibitions at Gallery One (1973) and Galerie Contemporaine (1975). She left Beirut for Amman in 1983 amid civil war. She returned to Beirut in the 1990s where she remained until her death in 2022. Her work is held in the collections of the Sursock Museum, Beirut; The Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut; National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; The British Museum, London; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; Darat al-Funun: The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman and Asilah Museum, Morocco.