HASSAN MASSOUDY

Hassan Massoudy was born in Iraq in 1944, and at the age of seventeen, he began working with calligraphers in Baghdad for eight years. In June 1969, he attended Fine Arts School in Paris, France and has lived there ever since.

Massoudy's creations came out from the meeting of the past and present, Eastern art and Western art, and tradition and modernity. He has perpetuated the tradition of calligraphy craft while also as breaking tradition at the same time. Massoudy simplifies lines, tending to purer lines and adding color. In his work, Massoudy introduces signs, letters, words and sentences, at times borrowing from famous poets and great writers like Schiller or Khalil Gibran.

Massoudy explains how poetry becomes calligraphy:

I count the straight letters then the curves so as to be able to create a rhythm by composing them.
I dream about those letters.
I imagine the word in different styles of calligraphy.
I sketch a felines, transforming the letters, I move them around, adjust them.

The line, as a dynamic force, and in its adequate relation with the meaning of words, must reflect two things: on the one hand strength and rigor, on the other abandon and grace. The line's aspect must suggest a direction: a pushing or pulling gesture, quick or slow, heavy or light, calm or bursting fort.

Calligraphy is like all the other arts, the expression of happiness and suffering go side by side. Do and undo, and grow through each experience.