In 1934, Suha Traboulsi, a prominent yet highly controversial Arab artist, painted 14 equally sized canvasses. Each consisted of four carefully considered elements: a color geometric abstraction in the middle of each canvas; its frame (from ornate to simple, wood to metal and gold Victorian or Rococo-type frames to plain minimalist Plexiglas box frame); the frame’s shadow (from faint to sharply delineated); a neutral ground. Each work was titled Untitled I (1934). The works were acquired by a private collector and never shown. They reappeared at the Dubai Art Fair in 2012 and were now acquired by another private collector (who also wishes to remain anonymous) who permitted us to reproduce them here for the first time.

This portfolio first appeared in Document’s Fall/Winter 2015 issue.