Simone Baltaxé Martayan

Simone Baltaxé Martayan was born in Paris in 1925. She began her studies at the School of Applied Arts in Paris in 1940 but was forced to flee to Lyon in 1942 during WWII where she studied at the School of Fine Arts. She returned to Paris in 1946 where she pursued further training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the studio of Jean Souverbie. In 1951, she married Noubar Martayan and followed him to Lebanon where she remained until 1978. She began exhibiting her work in the Salons du Printemps at the UNESCO Palace in 1957. In 1964, she met the weaver George Audi and began producing tapestries, which she showed at the Sursock Museum’s Salons d’Automne. She held solo exhibitions in Beirut at Gallery One (1968) and Modulart (1974). Her work features in the collections of the Sursock Museum in Beirut and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.