The paintings in these photographs were made in the late 1950s by a Palestinian painter named Suha Traboulsi. The paintings were hailed by many Arab art historians as precursors to the Op-Art abstractions that would soon take hold of the Western Europe and North American art scenes. 

 

But in a recent interview, Traboulsi asserted that the paintings had little to do with Op-Art. She stated that her paintings were based on photographs of the shelling of Beirut in the 70’s. To prove her point, she provided these photographs of the paintings where she pinned the shelling photographs that inspired her works on the side of each canvas.