Courtesy of the artist and The Third Line, Dubai
Rana Begum
Bangladesh (b.1977)
Stories
About Rana Begum
In Attunement
Painting Nothing: An Introduction to Abstract Art in the Middle East
The traditional Western art history books will tell you that the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky “invented” abstract art—depiction free from representation, focussing instead on elements of form, colour, line, tone, and texture—in around 1910. As with much of the art history canon, this narrative is slowly being unravelled and lesser-known histories of abstraction are being added to the story, such as the contributions of female artists (for example, the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint painted her first abstract work in 1906) and artistic developments in non-Western regions.