Known for her provocative paintings and sculptures, the late Huguette Caland said, “I never sit down in front of a drawing or a painting and think, ‘I’m going to paint something erotic.’ Erotic means life, there is no life without some form of eroticism. You can’t separate eroticism from life.” In this sense, Caland’s work is a deep observation of her surroundings. The daughter of Lebanon’s first post-independence president, Bechara El Khoury, her art reflects the political tensions in Beirut as well as the social shifts of her time, including the global sexual awakening of the 1960s. Caland’s largest retrospective to date—300 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and documentary ephemera—is now on view at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía. —Carolina de Armas