Zurayk, Afaf, Drawn by Light, Beirut, American University Press of Beirut, 2019
→Zurayk, Afaf, Nasr, Noel, My Father: Reflections, Beirut, Rimal Books, 2010
→Zurayk, Afaf, Nasr, Noel, Saab, Rami, Shifting Lights, exh. cat., Biet Beirut, Beirut (December, 2017-January, 2018), Beirut, Librarie Antoine, 2017
Afaf Zurayk: Return Journeys, Saleh Bakarat Gallery, Beirut, January 18-February 23, 2019
→Scripted on Water, Janine Rubiez Gallery, Beirut, January 11-31, 2012
→Afaf Zurayk, Foundry Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1991
Lebanese-American painter and poet.
Born into an academic family in Beirut in 1948, Afaf Zurayk and her three sisters came in touch with art at an early age. Her parents recognise her talent early on and send her to an art school at the age of ten. Her father is Constantin Kaysar Zurayk, a well-known intellectual, acting president of the American University of Beirut (AUB) and a leading figure of the Arab Nationalist Movement. By the age of fifteen, A. Zurayk receives private lessons from the renowned Lebanese artist Helen Khal (1923-2009), who significantly influences her artistic style.
A. Zurayk began her training as an artist in the late 1960s, first at the AUB, then at Harvard. She graduated in 1972 and returned to Beirut. She was travelling to Washington, DC in 1975 when civil war broke out in her homeland. She returned to Beirut shortly after, terribly shocked by the war, but Washington would eventually become a second home for her. In 1976 she decided to focus solely on her artistic practice and gave lectures at the Lebanese American University. In 1983, A. Zurayk emigrates to Washington. By that time she had developed her own style, layering oil paint of similar nuances mixed with a dry brush, as seen for example in her series Beirut Octet (2022).
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© Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, 2023