Simone Fattal and Her Mythologies: A Retrospective Exhibition at Paris's Museum of Modern Art

The MAM Paris presents "Cities at the Bottom of a Lake," the first Paris-based monographic exhibition dedicated to Simone Fattal. From September 18, 2026 to January 24, 2027, visitors can admire the paintings, ceramics, collages, and books that span more than five decades of her work.

The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris is dedicating an exhibition to Simone Fattal with From Cities to the Bottom of a Lake, a retrospective running from September 18, 2026 to January 24, 2027. It’s an opportunity to trace the Lebanese-American artist’s trajectory through about a hundred works—paintings, ceramics and collages—marking her first monographic museum show in Paris.

Born in Damascus in 1942 and long based in Paris, Simone Fattal has built a body of work that draws on literature, archaeology, mythology, and history. After studying philosophy in Beirut and at the Sorbonne, with additional courses at the École du Louvre, she began painting in the late 1960s in Lebanon, a practice she paused during her exile in the United States in 1980. She then founded the publishing house The Post-Apollo Press, devoted to poetry and experimental texts, before returning to visual creation in the early 1990s, notably through ceramics.

The exhibition journey brings together more than fifty years of work without following a strict chronological order. The pieces are grouped by theme to juxtapose the different periods and techniques the artist explored. The early landscape paintings converse with ceramic sculptures, collages that blend personal narratives with collective memory, and watercolors and inks created during the artist’s return to Paris. A selection of works published by The Post-Apollo Press rounds out the presentation, underscoring the importance of the artist’s editorial activity within the arc of their career.

With Des villes au fond d’un lac, the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris offers a cross-cutting reading of Simone Fattal's work by letting the media, cultural references, and the different stages of her career converse with one another. This retrospective helps readers gain a clearer sense of the artist whose creations draw on landscapes as much as on narratives, myths, and ancient civilizations.

The exhibition route is varied and sometimes surprising, but it isn’t always immediately accessible at first glance. Simone Fattal’s style hews close to abstraction. You can notice color movements on a canvas, humanoid statues, obscure inscriptions... Yet all of these works are loaded with meaning.

Take the time to read the gallery texts and the notes that accompany the works in order to fully grasp all the myths, all the stories that inspired these creations. Greek gods, Mesopotamian warriors, divine animals, nature-inspired forms, and plays of light: Simone Fattal retells the ancient tales that shaped our cultures and civilizations. Sometimes time blends and repeats itself: present-day events, the dramas the artist has lived through echo these stories from the past, and thus echo in the artist’s work. Wars, flight in search of survival, people pursuing power—all end up looking similar, regardless of the century.

Step into this exhibition with an open mind, and let yourself be carried away by the mythologies and stories of Simone Fattal at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris.

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