32 - Helen Khal (1923-2009) | Lebanese

Helen Khal (1923-2009) | Lebanese Untitled (Yellow), c. 1970's Oil on Canvas Signed: Signed ‘H. Khal’ (lower left); signed again ‘H. KHAL’ on the reverse. Dimensions: Artwork: 80 × 60 cm | 31.5 × 23.6 in Provenance: Private Collection, Spain. Condition: Oil on canvas, unlined, on its original stretcher. The paint layer is stable and clean, with no losses observed; the tacking margins sound; unframed. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report. Conditions of Sale: All lots are sold as is, in the condition described. The condition summary is given as a courtesy; a full condition report is available on request before the sale. Attributions are governed by our Terms and Conditions. All enquiries must be made before bidding; no further information can be provided after the sale. By placing a bid you confirm that you have read and accept our Terms and Conditions in full, as set out in the terms of this sale. Shipping: Aurora & Athena coordinates professional, insured shipping for every purchase through vetted logistics partners: packing, transport, insurance and the export paperwork are arranged on the buyer's behalf and charged at the provider's cost. Buyers are equally welcome to collect in Barcelona or to appoint a carrier of their own. Lots are released once the total purchase price has been received. For shipments outside the EU an export licence may be required and Spanish export duties may apply to certain higher-value works; these are the buyer's responsibility. No export tax applies within the EU. Full shipping and export information is available on request. -- A field of saturated yellow holds, within a soft green-grey border, two pale rectangles stacked one above the other: the upper one cream with a lighter inner panel, the lower one a cool lavender grey set in a frame of warm ivory, the two divided by a thin band of green and gold. At the foot a small grey tab breaks the yellow margin. The edges of every shape are brushed, not ruled, so that the colours breathe into one another and the picture seems lit from within. This is Helen Khal’s signature manner, the meditative colour-field abstraction she arrived at in Beirut in the late 1960s and 1970s while teaching at the American University: rectangles that carry no symbol but colour itself, in her words ‘containers of colour’, and above all her yellow, the colour of the Lebanese light. Khal (1923–2009), co-founder of Gallery One in 1963 and the subject of a Sursock Museum retrospective in 2019–20, is today among the most sought-after Lebanese modernists; our two previous canvases by her, in December 2024 and July 2025, both sold far above estimate.