Laure Ghorayeb

Laure Ghorayeb was born in 1931 in Der El Qamar, Lebanon. The celebrated painter has also worked as a cultural journalist and critic between 1962 through 1979 and more recently after the year 2000 at Annahar newspaper. Since 1966, Ghorayeb has participated in a number of solo and collective exhibitions in Lebanon, Europe, Asia and the Arab world: Paris, Baghdad, Alexandria, Germany, Syria, Kuwait, Charka, Oman, Egypt, North Africa, India, Australia, Switzerland, and Algeria.

She has published 4 books: “Noir... les bleus” in 1960, “Une couronne d'épines autour de ses pieds” in 1965, “Temoignage” in 1985 and “33 jours” in 2007.

Laure Ghorayeb has held solo and group exhibitions at Galerie Janine Rubeiz since 2001, and together with her son Mazen Kerbaj in 2007, 2010 and 2015. She was featured in the exhibition “The Doors of Perception”, alongside artists Huguette Caland and Etel Adnan, at Galerie Janine Rubeiz in 2016. In April 2010, she participated in the exhibition “Convergence - New Art from Lebanon”, at the Katzen Art Center of the American University in Washington DC. She took part in “Pinceaux pour Plumes” at Sursock Museum and her work has been showcased with Huguette Caland in Art Dubai Modern 2014 and regularly in Abu Dhabi Art Fairs.

Her work was featured at the exhibition: “Home Beirut: Sounding the Neighbors” at the MAXXI Museum in Rome, in 2017, and at the exhibition “Laure et Mazen: Correspondance(s)” at the Sursock Museum in 2019. It has been acquired by a number of prominent collections, such as the British Museum, Sursock Museum and Fondation Saradar.

Ghorayeb’s artistic practice is impossible to summarize into few words. As a witness of Lebanon’s recent history, not only as an artist, but also as a poet and journalist, Laure Ghorayeb obsessively documented the people and events in her life, charting the experiences of living through political conflicts to moments of personal happiness. Her work depicts personal experiences of loss through animated but profoundly irreverent and bold characters.