Madiha Umar (1908 – 2005 in Aleppo) ( ar, مديحة عمر) was an Iraqi artist who was known for incorporating calligraphy with abstract art. She is generally perceived as the first Arab artist to have done this. Therefore, she is seen as the precursor to the

Hurufiyya movement The Hurufiyya movement ( ar, حروفية ''ḥurufiyyah'', adjectival form ''ḥurufī'', 'letters' (of the alphabet)) is an aesthetic movement that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century amongst Muslim artists, who used their unde ...

. Also, Umar was the first woman to receive a scholarship from the Iraqi government to study in Europe. Today her grandson Dara Kittani manages her Estate Collection. To see more about Madiha Umar go to her official website www.madihaumar.com

Life and career

Madiha Umar was born in Aleppo,

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

, now Syria. Her father was Circassian and her mother was Syrian; mixed parentage was typical in the multicultural Turkish Empire. However, the family moved to Iraqi when she was a young girl. Umar attended the Sultaniyya School in

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

, where she drew praise from Ali Riza for her painting skills. She then trained as a teacher at the

Maria Grey Training College The listed building near Twickenham and Isleworth where the college was from 1946 Maria Grey Training College was a training college in London, England, for teachers from 1878 to 1976. When it opened, it was the first teacher training college fo ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in the 1930s, graduating with First class honours in Arts and Crafts in 1933. She then taught painting at the

Academy of Fine Arts The following is a list of notable art schools. Accredited non-profit art and design colleges * Adelaide Central School of Art * Alberta College of Art and Design * Art Academy of Cincinnati * Art Center College of Design * The Art Institute ...

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

, becoming head of department before leaving in 1942. She became a naturalised Iraqi.Nusair, I., "The Cultural Costs of the 2003 US-Led Invasion of Iraq: A Conversation with Art Historian Nada Shabout," ''Feminist Studies,'' Vol. 39, No. 1 (2013), p. 12
Online:
/ref> In 1939 she married Yasin Umar, a diplomat. In 1942 she moved to Washington, to accompany her husband, whose appointment as a member of the Iraqi Commission took him to the capital. In the US, she came across a book on Arabic calligraphy by Islamic scholar,

Nabia Abbott Nabia Abbott (31 January 1897 – 15 October 1981) was an American scholar of Islam, papyrologist and paleographer. She was the first woman professor at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. She gained worldwide recognition for he ...

and this inspired her to explore the possibilities of incorporating letters into her artwork. She first began to explore the idea of integrating Arabic letters into painting in the 1940s and in 1949, with the encouragement of art historian,

Richard Ettinghausen Richard Ettinghausen (February 5, 1906 – April 2, 1979) Princeton, New Jersey was a German-American historian of Islamic art and chief curator of the Freer Gallery. Education Ettinghausen was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He received his ...

, she exhibited a series of 22 hurufist-inspired paintings at Georgetown Public Library in Washington. For this, she generally earns the reputation as the first Arab artist of the modern era to have incorporated Arabic letters into her art, and the first artist to have exhibited such works. Later in the same year, she wrote the book, ''Arabic Calligraphy: An Element of Inspiration in Abstract Art''. In 1952, Umar participated in the ''Ibn Sina'' exhibition, held at the Art Institute in Baghdad with 48 paintings, all of which employed Arabic letters in a modern, secular artwork. This event brought her work to the attention of Middle-Eastern artists. She has been variously acclaimed as the pioneer of a movement or as the precursor to the movement that now carries the name, '' Huryfiyya art movement.'' She studied education at the George Washington University; then studied fine arts at the

Corcoran School of Art The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design (known as the Corcoran School or CSAD) is the professional art school of the George Washington University, in Washington, DC.Peggy McGloneUniversity names first director of Corcoran School of the Arts and ...

, graduating in 1952 and received a MFA in 1959. In 1971 she joined the

One Dimension Group The One Dimension Group ( ''Al Bu'd al Wahad'') was a modern art collective founded in Iraq, by Shakir Hassan Al Said in 1971 which attempted to combine medieval Sufi traditions with contemporary, abstract art. Although the One Dimension Group w ...

founded by

Shakir Hassan Al Said Shakir Hassan Al Said ( ar, شاكر حسن ال سعيد) (1925–2004), an Iraqi painter, sculptor and writer, is considered one of Iraq's most innovative and influential artists. An artist, philosopher, art critic and art historian, he was act ...

; a group that sought to synthesise indigenous art with European trends and successfully bridged the gap between heritage and modernity.Al-Ali, N. and Al-Najjar, D., ''We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War,'' Syracuse University Press, 2013, p. 22; Lindgren, A. and Ross, S., ''The Modernist World,'' Routledge, 2015, p. 495; Mavrakis, N., "The Hurufiyah Art Movement in Middle Eastern Art," ''McGill Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Blog,'' Online: https://mjmes.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/article-5/; Tuohy, A. and Masters, C., ''A-Z Great Modern Artists,'' Hachette UK, 2015, p. 56; Shabout, N.,"Shakir Hassan Al Said: Time and Space in the Work of the Iraqi Artist - A Journey Towards One Dimension," ''Nafas Art Magazine,'' May, 2008
Online:
/ref>

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Omar, Madiha 1908 births 2005 deaths 20th-century Iraqi painters Abstract painters Artists from Baghdad Iraqi calligraphers Iraqi contemporary artists Iraqi women painters 20th-century women artists

Life and career

See also

References