Google Doodle celebrates Saloua Raouda Choucair's 102 birth anniversary

The Lebanese, painter and sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair was born on June 24, 1916, in Beirut. She is considered to have been the first abstract artist in Lebanon. Google Doodle today is honouring her on her 102nd birth anniversary.

Choucair began her art, mainly painting in the studios of Lebanese painters Moustafa Farroukh (1935) and Omar Onsi (1942).

Her abstract painting exhibition held at the Arab Cultural Gallery in 1947 in Beirut is considered to be the world's first abstract painting exhibition.

In 1948. she moved out of her native town and went to Paris and studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. She also attended Fernand Leger's studio.

In 1950, she became the first Arab artist to take part in the Salon des Realites Nouvelles held in Paris.

It was after nine years in 1959 that she shifted her focus from painting to sculpture. Sculpting became a part of her life and her main occupation.

For her tremendous work and execution of a stone sculpture for a public site in Beirut, she was awarded the National Council of Tourism Prize in the year 1963. She was also presented with an honorary retrospective exhibition of her work at the National Council of Tourism in Beirut.

She was also honoured with an honorary doctorate from the American University of Beirut in May 2014.