"Louvre Abu Dhabi" launches its first exhibition for the year 2021
80 works of art exploring the identification of East and West in 'Abstraction and Calligraphy'
The exhibition highlights the works of Arab artists from the 20th and 21st centuries. Emirates Today
The exhibition includes a collection of works by the pioneers of abstract art in the world and the Arab world.
Emirates today
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Under the title "Abstraction and the art of calligraphy ... Toward a global language", the Louvre Museum Abu Dhabi launched its first exhibition for the year 2021, and the exhibition, which will run until next June 12, traces the emergence of the art of modern abstraction through signs and symbols, leading to the inspiration of the artists that goes back to the art of Arabic and Asian calligraphy. , Highlighting intercultural inspiration.
New language
The exhibition includes more than 80 artworks on loan from 16 partner institutions and six works from the Louvre Abu Dhabi Private Collection, which are works by Paul Klee, Lee Krasner, Andre Mason, Jackson Pollock, Cee Twombly, Wassily Kandinsky, and other 20th century artists who felt the need to create A new global language drawing inspiration from calligraphy.
The exhibition highlights the works of Arab artists from the 20th and 21st centuries, such as Diya Al-Azzawi, Anwar Jalal Shamzah, Ghada Amer, Shiraza Hoshiari and Mona Hatoum, who drew inspiration from letters and their shapes, to free writing from its purely linguistic form and wear it in a new artistic way, and it includes artworks A synthesis of two contemporary artists, El Sid and Sankey King, who show that artists today are still searching for new visual forms to incorporate into their art in response to the current societal changes.
The exhibition includes four sections: The first section focuses on “pictorial drawings”, which are symbolic images that represent words and ideas in ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, which served as a source of inspiration for abstract art artists.
As for the second section, it focuses on the “marks” that in the history of writing occupied the place of pictorial drawings, thus breaking the barrier between writing and pictures.
The third section of the exhibition, titled “Features,” shows how Western artists combined the energy of oriental calligraphy into their brushstrokes to create fluid lines.
The exhibition concludes with a section called Calligraphy, which illustrates how artists around the world - from Brion Gissin to Henri Micho, Shaker Hassan Al-Saeed and Suleiman Mansour - have resorted to the art of calligraphy in their work.
Loaned business
The works on loan are from the collection of the Center Pompidou in Paris, the Louvre Museum in Paris, the National Center for Plastic Arts in Paris, the Jean Matisse Foundation in Paris, the Jacques Bailey Gallery in Paris, the Jean Boucher Jaeger Gallery in Paris, the Municipal Museum of Saint-Germain Laval and the Grenoble Museum of Art Beautiful, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in New York, the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation in New York, the Michael Werner Gallery, Markesh Wilmersdorf in Trebeben, the Maki Gallery in New York, the Mona Hatoum studio in London, the Norman Art Production in Paris, and the El Sid Studio in Dubai, as well as Guggenheim Museum Abu Dhabi.
Exceptional works
The head of the Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, said: The museum is once again presenting outstanding artworks within an innovative museum framework, which are exceptional works of art due to the stories of mutual inspiration between cultures, many of which are displayed for the first time in Abu Dhabi and the region as a whole.
"Art and culture draw inspiration from each other, and Louvre Abu Dhabi will continue to play a pivotal role in transforming our city into a center of creativity in the region and the world," Al Mubarak added.
"The exhibition embodies a continuation of the important cultural efforts made over the past year, despite the global challenges posed by the (Covid-19) pandemic," he said.
He emphasized that the adaptability and flexibility that we showed during this time contributed to the development of the emirate's cultural landscape in an effort to meet the needs and aspirations of our audience of different cultures.
East and West
“The project that I worked on with Louvre Abu Dhabi embodies dialogues and intercultural exchanges, as it sheds light on the dialogues between places and times embodied by the concept of a global museum, and the dialogues between pictures,” said Assistant Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in charge of cultural programs, and curator Didier Otinger. And the letters that are reflected in the painters' fascination with calligraphy and vice versa. ”
Third season
Dr. Soraya Njeim, Director of Art Collections and Curators of the Museum and Scientific Research at Louvre Abu Dhabi, said: “With the opening of this exhibition, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is launching its third cultural season that focuses on exchanges between East and West, exploring the ways that characterized their creativity. The art of abstraction in the twentieth century, we found that it was the result of the abstract artists ’contemplation of various signs, lines and figurative drawings from Eastern cultures, and if we contemplated around us we would find letters in various types of arts such as calligraphy and graffiti, Asia and North Africa have taken a pivotal position in this context, and we find this dimension Which takes a spiritual character - if you will - in the literal movement that appeared among Arab artists, which played an important role in the development of contemporary abstraction.
She added that the exhibition aims to draw the encounter between East and West on one painting, highlighting the artistic practices that Western artists have acquired from cultures far removed from their own.
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