Arab American Heritage Month: Saliba Douaihy

Since 2017, the Arab American Foundation has designated April as Arab American Heritage Month. Forty-eight states made statements honoring the April celebration in 2023. That same year, President Joseph Biden issued a proclamation for April to officially be known as Arab American Heritage Month to encourage greater awareness of Arab culture and history in the United States. To recognize this national month, let’s spotlight an Arab American artist, Saliba Douaihy.

Saliba Douaihy (1915–1994, United States, born Lebanon), Majestic, 1965. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 46" x 53" (117.3 x 137.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2025 Artist or Estate of Artist. (MOMA-P2808)

Much of Douaihy’s practice is characterized by a minimalist aesthetic revealing a deep interest in color and form. He usually painted with a precise, hard edge style executed with a minimalist rigor. Douaihy’s work investigated depth and space as well as a search for the sublime in the most elemental forms. Majestic is exemplary of the later years of his practice. It was inspired by the works of Josef Albers (1888–1976) and German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) admonition to “find the sublime.” Vast variations on brown take over most of the canvas and are spliced with brilliant tones of orange, white, and green. The asymmetrical shapes lie on a single plane, lending a flat quality to the composition. They are similar to the “zip lines” in the work of Abstract Expressionist Barnett Newman (1905–1970).

Born in Ehden, northern Lebanon, Douaihy was first exposed to painting and Western art through the Maronite church in his hometown. At age fourteen, he was apprenticed to the academic painter of portraits and religious subjects, Habib Srour (1860–1938). Srour taught Douaihy painting fundamentals, but Douaihy felt that Srour's work was limited in vision and somewhat stale. Receiving a grant, Douaihy studied painting at the School of Fine Arts at a time when Paris was the center of modern art. While exposed to those modern movements, he was not interested in modern art at that time. After returning to Lebanon, Douaihy produced landscapes and religious subjects in an Impressionist style. Reading about modern art, his interest in expanding his work beyond representational subjects increased. 

In 1950, Douaihy moved to New York, settling in Brooklyn Heights. Gradually, the subject of his figurative painting became secondary to color and shape, which eventually became the dominant focus. He credits his association with Abstract Expressionists Mark Rothko (1904–1970), Hans Hofmann (1880–1966), and Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) for his movement toward Minimalism. He never joined or belonged to any particular artists' group, but his exposure to American modernism inspired his use of hard edge abstraction. Most of Douaihy’s paintings created between the 1960s and his death in 1994 display a hard edge style.

Correlations to Davis programs: Explorations in Art 2E Kindergarten: 1.9; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 4: 6.7; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 5: 6.4; Explorations in Art 2E Grade 6: 5.1