Lot 228: AHMED MOUSTAFA (EGYPT, B. 1943)

Al-Bayt al-Ma'muur (Landscape of the Long-Enduring House of Worship)
signed in Arabic and dated '2006' (on the left edge)
oil and acrylic on canvas
61 x 72in. (155 x 185cm.)
Painted in 2006

Text: The Holy Qur'an, Chapter 3, verses 96-99.

Ahmed Moustafa originally trained as a figurative painter in the European tradition at Alexandria University, where he then taught, graduating in 1966. In 1974 he went to London's Central School of Art and Design to study advanced printmaking, and later began to lecture at the same school on Arabic calligraphy. He went on to research the khatt al-mansub (proportional script) of the 10th century Abbasid calligrapher Ibn Muqla, and received his doctorate from St Martin's College of Art and Design in 1989. After 11 years of painstaking study, he revealed the exact geometric grid underlying Ibn Muqla's script, whose time-honoured formula has been followed for a thousand years.

Having rediscovered his Islamic roots, Moustafa emerged convinced that innovation in art and the devotional practice of Islamic art are not irreconcilable. Fusing his training as a painter, scribe and scholar, his paintings from that period incorporate sections from the Holy Qur'an or from early Islamic texts, visualised through colour and form to create complex images that can be appreciated at once on several different levels- from the precise content of text to the abstract composition of the words and colours.