Mona Saudi
منى السعودي
Born: Amman, Jordan
Domain: Visual Arts
Recognition: REGIONAL
Biography
Mona Saudi was a leading Arab sculptor of Palestinian heritage whose serene, monumental works in stone established her as one of the most important modern sculptors of the Middle East. Though born in Amman in 1945, she was of Palestinian origin and her life and art were deeply bound to the Palestinian cause and to broader Arab identity. As a teenager she left home to pursue art, exhibiting in Beirut before studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Saudi's sculpture is characterized by smooth, organic abstraction carved from marble, granite and other hard stones, often evoking seeds, mothers, and the cyclical forms of growth and birth. Her recurring motif of the seed and the column expressed themes of fertility, rootedness and renewal that resonated with Palestinian longing for land and continuity. A committed cultural activist, she was deeply involved with the Palestinian liberation movement in Beirut, designing posters and producing the influential 1970 book "In Time of War: Children Testify," which collected drawings by Palestinian children in refugee camps. She also illustrated poetry, including a celebrated dialogue between her stone forms and the verse of Adonis. Her works are held in public and private collections across the Arab world and internationally, and major retrospectives have surveyed her six-decade career. She maintained studios in Beirut and Amman and remained a mentor and inspiration to younger sculptors. Mona Saudi died in 2022, leaving a body of work that elevated abstract sculpture in the Arab world and bound modernist form to Palestinian and pan-Arab cultural memory.
Why This Person Matters
Saudi was a foundational figure in modern Arab sculpture, translating themes of rootedness and renewal into stone and binding abstract form to the Palestinian cause.