Log on to Twitter dot com today, and you’ll find one of the most important Arab artists of the 20th century—Maliheh Afnan.
Afnan, born in Haifa, Palestine on March 24 1935, was most well-known for what she called “written paintings”, which were ‘artifact-style’ mixed media that explored the themes of exile and displacement, while also touching upon the region’s conflicts.
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She also always included her Palestinian heritage in her work, often front and centre in some of her most striking and memorable work, the legacy of which continues to this day.
The doodle is viewable across the MENA region, including Algeria, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, and Oman.
The Institute of Contemporary Arts in Milan recently featured Afnan’s 1979 piece “Wartorn” through a virtual group exhibition entitled “The Symmetry of Fragility.” The exhibition ended a year ago today.
Afnan left Haifa in 1949 and her family sought refuge in Beirut, Lebanon in 1949 at the age of 14 before moving to the US in 1956 to pursue her dream of becoming an artist.
As a child, she was fixated on the written language, filling pages with imaginary text and numbers, which helped her develop a style of abstract calligraphy that was incredibly distinctive.
After finishing an MFA programme in 1962 in which she focused on fusing Arabic and Persian script , Afnan was given the phone number American calligraphic artist Mark Tobey by her professor. Afnan cold-called Tobey, who then became her mentor and aided her first European solo exhibition in 1971, a pivotal moment in her 50-year career.
She returned to Beirut in 1974, but civil war forced her to move to Paris. She later settled down in London in 1997 until her death in 2016.
Afnan is still renowned across the world, with art in galleries in the Middle East, Europe, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Her work has influenced artists the world over, and her script has become extremely influential in calligraphy circles.
For more, the book Maliheh Afnan: Traces, Faces and Places, released in 2010, is a great place to continue the journey into her art. Find the Amazon link here, or better yet, contact your local bookseller.
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