Originating in the 1940s and spanning several generations of artists, Hurufiyya is perhaps best seen as a series of approaches or tendencies. The artists are not part of a defined movement, and they include Arabic letters within their paintings for different reasons. The letters could form words or lines of poetry, or they might function as abstract motifs that interact with other shapes and marks. It is also possible for a painting to consist of a single letter or of patterns formed by repeated letters. These possibilities generate a rich and sometimes ambiguous interplay, where taxonomies shift in the space between painting, writing, calligraphy, the visual form of letters, sound, and linguistic meaning – between what is read in terms of the formal qualities of a painting, and what is read in terms of letters and words.
This variety also makes Hurufiyya a problematic label for some writers. One issue is that it can make the work of all artists working with letters appear the same, or suggest a single artistic movement that never existed. Artists may use Arabic letters for reasons of formalism, or politics, or nationalism, or mysticism and religion, or combinations of these. A further criticism came from the artist Dia Azzawi, who argued that including Arabic letters risks becoming merely a token symbol for Arab identity.
It is also important to emphasise that Hurufiyya is not the same as Arabic calligraphy (Khatt al Araby). In the introduction to the exhibition Hurufiyya: Art and Identity (Alexandria 2016-2017), Kamal Sultan describes Hurufiyya as arising from twentieth-century conditions, in contrast to calligraphy, which comes from an older tradition. Huruffiya results from the interplay between the artists’ training in the Modernist approaches that originated in Europe and America, and their heritage as artists from the Middle East. It began within the western art school context.
Unlike calligraphy, Hurufiyya isn’t passed down in a teacher-student lineage. It is usually on a larger scale, it uses the materials of western easel painting instead of the traditional soot ink and reed pen, and it doesn’t necessarily need to include words or sentences that form linguistic meaning. It also occurs at the time of the post-World War Two shift from figurative art dominated by Paris towards American abstraction. For example, the earlier work of Madiha Omar and Ibrahim Al Salahi from the 1940s and 1950s has a painterly quality that can be related to Abstract Expressionism, whereas from the 1960s there is a move to more hard-edge abstraction and Op Art related work such as in some paintings by Dia Azzawi and Kamal Boullata.
It is worth noting that Hurufiyya should not be confused with Hurufism, a kind of Sufi kabbalism based on mystical meanings of Arabic letters that can be seen for example in the book Ilm al Huruf (The Science of Letters) by the fourteenth-century Iranian mystic Fadl Allah Astarabadi ‘Al Hurufi’. There is however a tradition of experimentation and pleasure in the visual properties of letters that precedes the influence of western Modernism and relates to the importance of calligraphy in Islamic culture, for example in the abstractions formed in calligraphy such as the Ottoman tughra (ornate Sultan’s signature).
Although many Hurufiyya paintings have a spiritual focus, one of the earliest paintings to use shapes that relate to letters is Free Alphabet (1954) by the Algerian artist Mohammed Khadda. He studied in Paris during the Algerian independence war and on his return to Algeria in 1963 he wrote about the need for Arab artists to free themselves of European training, although the painting still owes a lot to Abstract Expressionism. In the newly independent Algeria, the Arabic language and script would become the official language, so here the shapes which suggest Arabic letters are not just part of an existing heritage, but also part of the future of independent Algeria. The painting has a political, anti-colonialist, pan-Arab, and future focused inspiration.
Mohammed Khadda. Free alphabet. 1954. Oil on canvas. Image from https://www.vitaminedz.com/fr/Algerie/mohamed-khadda-alphabet-libre-1954-2995-Photos-0-16179-1.html
Although from a later time, the paintings of the Tunisian artist Najeeb Belkhodja also relate to an affirmation of Arab history and identity. In Bleu, Noir et Blanc (2007), shapes that resemble both Arabic letters and the architecture of the older part of Tunis move across the canvas. The colours create contrasting bands which blur the distinction between foreground and background. The canvas simultaneously looks like a cityscape, a flat abstract work, and a form of writing. The suggestions of both the Arabic script and the buildings of the Tunis medina combine North African identity with the formats of Modernist painting.
Nejib Belkhodja, Bleu, Noir Et Blanc, 2007, Acrylic on canvas, 78.5 x 105 cm, Private Collection of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Madiha Umar is an artist who worked with calligraphy from an early point. The Eyes of the Night (1961) has an interesting word play that would only be apparent to an Arabic speaker. The painting’s colours and shapes suggest the eyes of owls or nocturnal animals, or the false eye patterns on the wings of moths, but some forms look like the Arabic letter ‘ain’, which is the name of a letter and also means ‘eye’ in Arabic (For people who can’t read Arabic, these are the shapes in the top right corner that look similar to the number 3). So non-Arabic speakers would see a painting that is abstract but also has shapes that look like eyes, and Arabic speakers would understand a further allusion to eyes with the shape and sound of a letter in their language.
Madiha Umar. The Eyes of the Night. 1961. Oil on Canvas. 60 x 90 cm. Image from https://www.barjeelartfoundation.org/collection/the-eyes-of-night-madiha-umar/
A different form of Hurufiyya can be seen in Ahmed Moustafa’s Blue Fugue (1976). Here the letters of Allah, the a, l, and h sounds in Arabic, are repeated and overlaid to create a pattern that becomes a visual composition and also something resembling an echo or a musical fugue, as the title suggests, where repeated units create further patterns. The letters seem to move out from an origin like the call to prayer, resonating across time as well as across the space of the canvas like musical notes or a recording of a sound wave. Paintings with this kind of spiritual and religious quality aspect are probably the most common form of Hurufiyya.
Ahmed Moustafa. The Blue Fugue. 1976. Oil on canvas. 142 x 105 cm. Image from https://fenoon.com/1970s-pivotal-migration/#.ZFIyiexByWA
The Palestinian artist Kamal Boulatta creates artworks that have this contemplative, spiritual quality, and in some ways are within the tradition of Arabic calligraphy found in mosques, with a meditation on the name of Allah and on the Arabic language and the words of the Qur’an. The silkscreen print Huwa Allah Al Awwal, Allah al Akhir (1983) has interlocking script with the word ‘huwa’ (he) in the middle, and then other words repeated in resonating, resplendent circles. The title of this work means “he is Allah, the first and the last”, the creator from the beginning of time until the end.
Fig. Kamal Boullata. Huwa Allah Al Awwal, Allah al Akhir. 1983. Silkscreen print. 60 x 50 cm.
https://www.meemartgallery.com/artists/28-kamal-boullata/works/457-kamal-boullata-huwa-allah-al-awwal-allah-al-akhir-he-is-the-1983/
In conclusion, Hurufiyya has an interesting mixed heritage that can be related to the experience and hopes of many Arab artists in the decades after World War Two. Some of the influential earlier artists, such as Madiha Umar, Jamil Hamoudi, Ibrahim El-Salahi, and Kamal Boullata, studied in Europe and America at a time when modernism was presented as a universal, global artistic language. These artists, and others who followed, aimed at creating an alternative modernism which engaged both with international styles and with the visual traditions of their region. Hurufiyya therefore becomes one approach to the question of how to negotiate between artistic procedures developed in Europe and America, and aspects of an Arabic visual heritage.
The Hurufiyya artists follow many of the maxims of abstraction developed by theorists such as Clement Greenberg, but the inclusion of Arabic letters works to augment or undermine this. Hurufiyya also recontextualises the Arabic letters within formats related to American painting, so the dialectics of what is being modified or subverted are complex. It is also part of a historical phase of Arab nationalism combining a celebration of the past with a focus on the future. Even though recent decades have seen a greater focus on sculptural, installation, and lens-based artworks by Arab artists, the Arabic alphabet remains an important inspiration and source.
Charbel Dagher. Al-Huroofiya al-Arabiya: Fan Wa Hawiya. Beirut, al-Matboat al-Sharqiya Co.1991. Translated into English as Arabic Hurufiyya: Art and Identity Milan, Skira Editore, 2016.
Nadia Shabout. Modern Arab Art. Formation of Arab Aesthetics. Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2007: 77 and 94.
Kamal Sultan. Introduction to Hurufiyya: Art and Identity. Catalogue of the exhibition organised by the Barjeel Foundation, Alexandria, 30 November 2016 - 28 January 2017.
Nadia Shabout. op.cit: 67
See Hannah Feldman and Anneka Lenssen in Suheyla Takesh and Lynn Gumpert, eds. Taking Shape. Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s-1980s. New York and Munich, Grey Art Gallery and Hirmer Publishers, 2021:98 and 124.
