Top 5 Arabic Calligraphy Artist

Top 5 Arabic Calligraphy Artist

1.  Hassan Massoudy (حسن المسعود الخطاط):

Hassan Massoudy (حسن المسعود الخطاط), born in 1944, is an Iraqi painter and calligrapher, considered by the French writer Michel Tournier as the "greatest living calligrapher", currently lives in Paris. His work has influenced a generation of calligraffiti artists.
Massoudy has become an important influence on a generation of calligraffiti artists. The Tunisian street artist, el Seed, who uses calligraphy in his art, points to the work of Iraqi painter, Hassan Massoudy as a major source of inspiration, noting that "The work of Hassan Massoudy was totally out of anything I’ve seen from the way he shapes the letters to the colors he uses. He completely revolutionized the art of calligraphy."

Massoudy often uses quotations from classic and modern writers as the inspiration for his work. One such work is Woman is a Ray of Divine Light painted in 1987, which is based on the words of a 13th-century Sufi poet, Rumi. For Massoudy, reproducing a poem in calligraphy means more than simply presenting it in a particular style, rather it enables him to grasp the inner meaning of the words.

Massoudy explains:

[The calligrapher must] assimilate all aspects of culture that relate to [his art]. Practice awakens the knowledge gradually stored up in the body and releases the expression of a myriad of nuances. [Calligraphic] codes serve to control the internal excitement and prevent his feelings from overflowing... but the calligrapher must pass beyond these set rules. To achieve his aim, he must first conform to these restrictions, and then go beyond them. This is because a true calligraphic composition must contain something indefinable, something elusive and powerful that takes it beyond the rules.

2.  eL Seed:
eL Seed (born 1981) is a French-Tunisian street artist whose works incorporate traditional Arabic calligraphy, a style he calls calligraffiti. Since the 2011 Tunisian revolution, eL Seed has consciously used his art as a tool of political expression, much like Egypt's Mohamed Mahmoud graffiti. He cites the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and the Iraqi artist Sundus Abdul-Hadi as inspirational figures whose art was able to spark political change.

 Born to a Tunisian family in Paris, France in 1981, eL Seed grew up speaking only the Tunisian dialect, and did not learn to read or write standard Arabic until his teens, when discovered a renewed interest in his Tunisian roots.

He created his first large-scale mural one year after the beginning of the Tunisian revolution, in the city of Kairouan. This mural was a calligraphic representation of passage from a Tunisian poem by Abu al-Qasim al-Husayfi dedicated to those struggling against tyranny and injustice. His influences include other graffiti artists including; Hest 1 and Shuck 2 along with Arabic calligraphers such as Mahmood Darwish and Nizar Qabbani.

In an interview with the media, he explained his desire to make political statements:

"I always make sure that I am writing messages, but there are also layers of political and social context and that's what I am trying to add into my work. The aesthetic is really important, that's what captures your attention, but then I try to open a dialogue that's based on the location and my choice of text."

Exhibitions:

• 2012 October 2012 – The Walls, solo exhibition – Itinerrance Gallery, Paris
• 2013 Solo exhibition – Medina, Tunis
• 2014 Declaration, sculpture exhibition – Tashkeel Gallery, Dubai
• 2016 Cairo – Arttalks.

Bibliography:

• Lost Walls: a Calligraffiti Journey through Tunisia. From here to Fame, Berlin (2014)

4.  Sadequain

Syed Sadequain Ahmed Naqvi (Urdu: سیّد صادِقَین احمد نقوی ‎), Tamgha-e-Imtiaz, Pride of Performance, Sitara-e-Imtiaz, also often referred to as Sadequain Naqqash, was a Pakistani artist, best known for his skills as a calligrapher and a painter. He is considered as one of the finest painters and calligraphers Pakistan has ever produced. He was also a poet, writing hundreds of rubāʿiyāt in the style of Omar Khayyam and Sarmad Kashani.

Sadequain was born on June 30, 1923 in Amroha, into a family of calligraphers. In late 1940s he joined the Progressive Writers and Artists Movement. His true talent was discovered by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy who brought Sadequain into the limelight. He also spent some time in Paris augmenting his skills.

Sadequain was widely praised for his calligraphic style, which is considered iconic by many critics of South Asian art.

Sadequain was part of a broader Islamic art movement that emerged independently across North Africa and parts of Asia in the 1950s and known as the Hurufiyya movement. Hurufiyah refers to the attempt by artists to combine traditional art forms, notably calligraphy as a graphic element within a contemporary artwork. Hurufiyah artists rejected Western art concepts, and instead searched for a new visual languages that reflected their own culture and heritage. These artists successfully transformed calligraphy into a modern aesthetic, which was both contemporary and indigenous. Prior to Sadeqain's work, only a few painters had experimented with the medium in Pakistan. Sadequain is a pioneer of the style, bringing calligraphy into a mainstream art form, and influencing subsequent generations of Pakistani artists.

Salahi carried the script with a flourish in all directions, giving it the 'power of space, vigor and volume'.

Sadequain painted classical literature from the poetic verses of Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz. He belonged to the school of thought which enriched realism with lyricism. His work was essentially linear. He also illustrated French Nobel Prize–winning writer Albert Camus, Ghalib, Iqbal, and Faiz. Thousand of the drawings he executed, were given away to his admirers. He wrote and published hundreds of quartets.

Sadequain was the most prolific painter in the period following the independence of Pakistan in 1947. He was constantly at work and he worked on large scale. He repeatedly stated that he was not interested in decorating drawing rooms of rich and powerful. He worked on large murals for public buildings, symbolic of the collective labour of humanity, and his work was mostly donated to the public.

Sadequain in his own words was primarily a painter of figures with allegorical significance.

Sadequain was responsible for the renaissance of Islamic calligraphy in Pakistan. He was one of the greatest calligraphers of Pakistan and helped transform the art of calligraphy into serious expressionist paintings. He claimed that his transformation into a calligrapher was manifested by divine inspiration. He did not follow the established tradition and created his own style of script. His alphabets exude motion, mood, and paint vivid pictures of the message of the words of Quran. Sadequain claimed that many of his paintings, especially after the seventies, had been based on calligraphic forms to portray images of cities, buildings, forests, men, and women.

In Pakistan, the art of calligraphy was relegated to a second-class status until Sadequain adapted this medium in the late nineteen sixties. Until then a few painters experimented with the medium but it remained just that, an experiment. After Sadequain transformed the art of calligraphy into a mainstream art form, most of the known Pakistani artists have followed Sadequain and calligraphic art now dominates the art scene.

In his lifetime two art galleries were established by the official authorities, one in Islamabad called Gallery Sadequain, which was located in Block F and the second one in the Frere Hall Karachi, also called Gallery Sadequain. After he died, the Islamabad gallery was disassembled and some two hundred paintings were unaccounted for and the Frere Hall gallery is closed for all practical purposes because of the security reasons. Forty calligraphic panels on marble slabs measuring 6 ft (1.8 m) x 5 ft each have disappeared.

At the time of his death at OMI Clinic in Karachi, his attendant was present when Sadequain took his last breath at 2:00 am. The attendant did not inform the doctors of Sadequain's death and instead took off for Frere Hall where Sadequain had been working on the ceiling. The attendant loaded as many paintings as he could in a Suzuki van, took them to a safe house and then returned to the hospital to inform the doctors. The stolen paintings are resurfacing for sale at regular frequency.

PIA owned Mid Way House hotel had a big Sadequain's painting at entrance and lot of other artwork by renowned Pakistani artists. After the sale of the hotel, all that art treasure is not on display or submitted to any art gallery.

Sadeqain died on 10 February 1987 at Karachi, Pakistan at the age of 63. He is buried in Sakhi Hassan graveyard in Karachi.

5.  Shakir Hassan Al Said
Shakir Hassan Al Said (Arabic: شاكر حسن ال سعيد‎) (1925–2004), an Iraqi painter, sculptor and writer, is considered one of Iraq's most innovative and influential artists. An artist, philosopher, art critic and art historian, he was actively involved in the formation of two important art groups that influenced the

direction of post-colonial art in Iraq. He, and the art groups in which he was involved, shaped the modern Iraqi art movement and bridged the gap between modernity and heritage. His theories charted a new Arabic art aesthetic which allowed for valuations of regional art through lenses that were uniquely Arabic rather than Western.

Al Said was born in Samawa, Iraq; a rural area. He spent most of his adult life living and working in Bagdad. His rural upbringing was an important source of inspiration for his art and his philosophies. He wrote about his daily trek to school in the following terms:

"On my way from school, I used to see scores of faces, brown faces, painful and toiling faces. How close they were to my heart! They pressed me and I passed them again and again. They suffered and I felt their suffering. The peasants with their loose belts were pricked by thorns. They were so close to my heart!"

Al Said's early work reveals the influence of European avant-garde art movements - particularly expressionism and cubism. However, his work also drew on his Arabic-Islamic heritage and popular culture. His work evolved from the 1960s after he began to focus on Sufism in the 1960s. From this time, he began to integrate Arabic letters as a visual element in his compositions. His artistic philosophy was rooted within both Sufism (a branch of Islam) and Western Modern ideals regarding structuralism, semiotics, deconstructionist, phenomenology, and existentialist thoughts. Iraqi negotiations of modernist and post-modernist conditions are exemplified Thoroughly throughout his work and artistic approach. While his focus on the Arabic script and power of Calligraphy became focused and driven following the founding of the "The One-Dimension" group, he chartered a unique contemporary aesthetic embodying the pairing of Arab styles and Islamic focus.

Calligraphy is of vital importance in Arabic art because letters were charged with Sufi intellectual and esoteric meaning. Letters were seen as primordial signifiers and manipulators of the cosmos. However, traditional calligraphic work was bound by strict rules, which amongst other things, confined calligraphy to devotional works. Al Said and his followers were responsible for setting calligraphy free from its traditional confines, and using it in modern abstract artworks. His fascination with line and its relationship with space and time is closely intertwined with his interest in Arabic words and calligraphy. Thus, around the 1960s Al Said gradually abandoned figurative expression and used Arabic letter as a center point for his compositions. In this, his transition from figurative to abstraction centered in on letters and words and how they can be woven into contemporary art.

Al Said published several books on modern art in Iraq and numerous articles in Arabic journals and newspapers. He is recognized as one of the fathers of modern art in Iraq. His influence as an artist, a teacher, and a forerunner of modern art.

His work is collected by major museums, such as Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, the Guggenheim in New York, and Sharjah Art Museum.

Select list of paintings

• Cubist Cockerel , Oil on board (53 x 56 cm), 1955
• Window to the Word || Hurrufiyya , Mixed media on cardboard laid onto canvas (125 x 125 cm), 1966
• Coffee Corner, (64 x 76 cm), 1967
• The Envious Shall Not Prevail || Al Hasud la yasud , Acrylic on wood (84.5 x 123 cm), 1979, Private Collection
• Objective Contemplations, oil on canvas, 120 X 120 cm, 1984
• Ta'imlat Mowdou'i, (Meditations), date unknown
• Wall Strip no. 4, Mixed media on wood, 22 X 122 cm, 1992 (now in the Jordan National Gallery).

Regards: Uzma Nasir Artist