Helen and Yusuf al-Khal opened Gallery One, aptly titled considering that the space was Beirut’s first permanent commercial art gallery, in 1963. Helen al-Khal had been born into a Lebanese family in Pennsylvania in 1923, and in 1946, she came to Beirut to study at the Académie libanaise des beaux arts (ALBA). In the same year, she met the Lebanese poet of Syrian descent, Yusuf al-Khal, who edited the 1957-founded literary magazine Shi’r. Their joint venture, Gallery One, opened near the offices of Shi’r, whose main mission was to explore new forms of Arabic poetry based on shi’r hurr (free verse).

Although there had not been any permanent commercial galleries in Beirut before the 1960s, exhibiting art was somewhat a common activity in the city: foreign embassies and cultural centres as well as university art departments at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and ALBA had been organising exhibitions since the 1930s in the city. The 1960s, however, welcomed a drastic change in Beirut’s cultural atmosphere and ecosystem as at least fifteen new galleries opened in the city between 1963 and 1971, echoing the beginning of Beirut’s golden age.

Gallery One was not only an art gallery, at least not a commercial space in our current understanding of the term, but something between a venue for the sale of artworks and a cultural centre with an active programme. In addition to exhibitions, the space hosted musical concerts, literary readings and book signings. It was a meeting place for the Beirut intelligentsia, bringing together artists working in diverse fields. In addition to the gallery’s unique historical position as Beirut’s first permanent commercial art space, Gallery One was also known for its pan-Arab activist agenda, using art as a vehicle to promote cultural unity. Since its inauguration, Gallery One exhibited artists widely from all over the Arab world, including Sudan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine. Between 1963 and 1975, Gallery One hosted over eighty-five exhibitions, displaying the kinds of Fateh Moudarres, Yvette Achkar, Ajaj Araui, Hrair, Ismail Fattah and Gazbia Sirry.

Featured image: Aref Rayess exhibition opening at Gallery One in 1967. Courtesy of Aref Rayess Foundation.