Galerie Hubert Winter

Simone Fattal was born in Damascus, Syria, and raised in Lebanon, where she studied philosophy at the École des Lettres in Beirut. She then moved to Paris, where she continued her philosophical pursuits at the Sorbonne. 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. She fled Lebanon in 1980 and settled in California, where she founded the Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to innovative and experimental literary work. In 1988 she enrolled in a course at the Art Institute of San Francisco, which prompted a return to her artistic practice and a newfound dedication to sculpture and ceramics. Fattal currently lives in Paris, and has had recent solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery (2021), ICA Milano (2021), Bergen Kunsthall (2020), and MoMA PS1 (2019). Fattal’s work—watercolours and collages as well as sculptures made from clay and bronze—exists between figuration and abstraction. She draws on sources ranging from war and conflict, to landscape painting, ancient religions and mythologies, Sufi poetry and the fragility of the human form. She explores the impact of displacement and migration as well as the politics of archaeology and excavation. Using frequently recurring motifs and forms, and just enough detail to make her characters discernable, her works construct worlds that feel as though they have emerged—temporarily—from history and memory.

The initial program of Galerie Hubert Winter, founded in 1971, was focused on Surrealism and rare publications from the 1920s, to mention solo exhibitions of Henri Michaux, Pierre Klossowski, Antonin Artaud ao. In the 1980s the program opened up to contemporary discussions and artists mostly from the USA joined and are still represented by the gallery -as for example Richard Tuttle, Lawrence Weiner, Haim Steinbach, Richard Nonas, Marcia Hafif and Fred Sandback. From 1983 until 1985 a branch in Düsseldorf was founded and from 1995 until 1999 the gallery joined the euphoric mood of Berlin. Since the last decade the gallery has focused on overseen female artists and represents the estate of Birgit Jürgenssen. Additionally, younger artists with a strong unique oeuvre were added to the portfolio.