Google celebrates one of the most important Arab artists of the twentieth century

Google on Monday celebrated Palestinian-born plastic artist Maliha Afnan, widely regarded as one of the most important Middle Eastern artists of the 20th century.

A creative drawing of the Palestinian artist’s face appears on the main Google search engine in several Arab countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Oman and others.

Google stated that Mleiha is known for what it described as “written panels” whose mixed media explore topics such as exile and displacement while recognizing conflicts in the Middle East and the impact of her cultural heritage.

The celebration of the Palestinian artist was not due to the anniversary of her birth, but to the presentation of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Milan, a piece dating back to 1979 entitled “Wartorn” in a virtual group exhibition entitled “The Consistency of Fragility”, which ended on this day in 2020.

Maliha Afnan was born in Haifa, Palestine, on March 24, 1935, before her family took refuge in Beirut after the war in 1949. Afnan was fascinated by the written language when she was a child and filled the pages with texts and imaginary numbers, which developed for her a striking style of abstract calligraphy.

Afnan moved to the United States in 1956 to pursue her dream of becoming an artist, and received a Master of Fine Arts from George Washington University in 1963.

Because of her introduction of Arabic and Persian calligraphy in her artworks, one of her teachers introduced her to the American calligrapher artist Mark Toby, who became her teacher and facilitated her first European solo exhibition in 1971, which is a turning point in Mleiha’s career that lasted for more than 50 years.

In 1974, Maliha returned to Beirut, but the civil war forced her to move to Paris before she settled in London in 1997, and she died there on January 6, 2016.

Today, Maliha Afnan’s work is shown in galleries throughout the Middle East, in many European museums, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Source: Agencies + Media