Young Warrior (The Trophy), 2023

Bronze
© Simone Fattal; courtesy the artist.

Simone Fattal studied philosophy at the École des Lettres in Beirut and the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1969 she returned to Beirut and began working as a visual artist, exhibiting her paintings locally until the start of the Lebanese Civil War. In 1980 she moved to the Bay Area with her partner, the artist Etel Adnan, where together they founded Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to innovative and experimental literary work. In 1988, after a course at the Art Institute of San Francisco, she returned to her artistic practice with a new dedication to abstract and figurative sculpture. Her works in ceramic, stoneware, terracotta, bronze, and porcelain recall ancient narratives with figures that reference The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, and Dhat al-Himma, among others. Her sculptures, such as Young Warrior (The Trophy), connect the present, the ancient, and the epic through a focus on the human form.