Feature: Hassan Massoudy

Sorry for not updating for a looong time ><.

----------------------------------------------------
*Name: Hassan Massoudy

*Place & Date of Birth: Al-Najaf, Iraq - 1944

*Summary of his life: Hassan Massoudy grew up in a traditional Iraqi society, characterised by strong religious beliefs, a high sense of solidarity and a keenness for festive gatherings.
As a youngster, in this town where all images were prohibited, he fulfilled his passion for art by making drawings and calligraphies while investing all his energy to get paper and pigments. In 1961 he left for Baghdad and started working as an apprentice for various calligraphers.The unfolding political events and ensuing dictatorship prevented from his dream of studying art, so he left for France in 1969.
He got to the "Ecole des Beaux-Arts" of Paris where he first worked on figurative painting, and to pay for his studies, he was doing headlines in calligraphy for Arabic magazines. In 1972, Hassan created the show "Arabesque" with the actor Guy Jacquet joined a few years later by the musician  Fawzy Al Aiedy. Arabesque was a public performance combining music and poetry together with calligraphies being performed and projected on a large screen. They did many performances across France and Europe over a period of thirteen years. Later he put together on his own, another show focusing on improvisations called "Calligraphie d'ombre et de lumiere" or "calligraphy of light and shade". From the year 2002 Hassan created his own books, which are translated into English, French, Italian, and German.
Creations from Hassan Massoudy are a subtle mix of present and past, oriental and occidental art, tradition and modernity. He perpetuates tradition while braking from it. Over the years he has purified and simplified the lines of his drawing. The words and phrases he draws come from poets and writers from all over the world or sometimes simply from popular wisdom. All his work is strongly inspired by a humanistic interest. The emotion that one may feel looking at his calligraphies comes from the movement of the lines, their lightness, their transparency, the balance between black, white, emptiness and fullness, the concrete and the abstract. From his training as a calligrapher in Iraq, Hassan Massoudy has kept the noble spirit of the craftsman who creates or invents his own tools and prepares his own inks.
~~~~~~`~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`~~~~~~

Here are a few of his works (in our gallery):

iraqideviants.deviantart.com/a…

iraqideviants.deviantart.com/a…

iraqideviants.deviantart.com/a…

iraqideviants.deviantart.com/a…

iraqideviants.deviantart.com/a…


reference: pagesperso-orange.fr/hassan.ma…
----------------------------------------------------------

tell me what you think