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Article

Africa: Arts of the book  

Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom

The coming of Islam to West Africa brought a need for and appreciation of manuscripts written in Arabic script. The first manuscripts read there were imported, mostly from Morocco, but manuscripts soon began to be produced locally, perhaps by the 16th century and certainly by the 17th. By the 18th and 19th centuries Arabic manuscripts were so common that it is possible to speak of a distinctive West African style. These written documents, many preserved in local libraries in Timbuktu and other centres and still relatively unknown, cover a variety of subjects ranging from history and science to literature. The finest in terms of both quality of materials and carefulness of execution are copies of the Koran, of which several dozen are known.

These Koran manuscripts typically comprise 400–500 separate sheets of hand-trimmed paper (each page approx. 230×170 mm). The paper was imported, often watermarked with the tre lune used by the firm of Andrea Galvini in Pordenone, Italy. The text is transcribed in a distinctive script sometimes dubbed ...

Article

Ajouré  

Gordon Campbell

French term for openwork, used in the decorative arts principally with reference to metalwork, bookbinding and heraldry. In metalwork, it denotes the piercing or perforation of sheet metal, a practice found as early as the ancient Egyptian period. In bookbinding, the term ajouré binding refers to a style that emerged in late 15th-century Venice in which bindings were embellished with pierced or translucent patterns, typically open designs of foliage. In heraldry, an ...

Article

Baltrušaitis, Jurgis, II  

Kirk Ambrose

(b Moscow, May 7, 1903; d Paris, Jan 25, 1988).

Lithuanian art historian, scholar of folklore and Egyptology, and diplomat of Russian birth. Son of the celebrated Lithuanian Symbolist poet of the same name, Jurgis Baltrušaitis II studied under Henri(-Joseph) Focillon at the Sorbonne and earned the PhD in 1931. The concerns of his mentor are evident in La stylistique ornementale dans la sculpture romane (1931), which reprises and extends arguments for the ‘law of the frame’ in Romanesque sculpture. Accordingly, the shapes of architectural members, such as capitals and tympana, determined the articulation of sculptural forms. This theory could account for the genesis of a wide array of monumental carvings, from foliate capitals to narrative reliefs, but ultimately it had a rather limited impact on the field of Romanesque sculptural studies. In a scathing critique, Schapiro argued that Baltrušaitis’s book—and by implication Focillon’s methods—robbed Romanesque sculptors of agency and neglected the religious and expressive meanings of this art form....

Article

Bassili Sehnaoui, Mouna  

Egyptian, 20th century, female.

Active in Lebanon.

Born 1945, in Alexandria.

Painter, graphic designer, illustrator. Figure compositions, figures.

Mouna Bassili Sehnaoui studied for two years at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, and completed her higher education at the University of Arizona in Tucson where she was awarded a diploma in graphic art and painting. She also won the first prize at the university's exhibition of students' works in ...

Article

Belkhamsa Chedli  

Tunisian, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 16 January 1947, in Tunis.

Illustrator, caricaturist, painter.

Belkhamsa Chedli spent two brief periods at the schools of fine art in Tunis and Paris. He works mostly for Tunisian newspapers and magazines. In 1983, he was awarded first prize for his cartoons by the association of Tunisian journalists. As well as his work as a cartoonist, he has also painted acrylics on canvas, works that display considerable care, precision and elegance. The themes of these paintings are taken from the world of fantasy, and are painted in cartoon style....

Article

Benanteur, Abdallah  

Algerian, 20th century, male.

Active in France since 1953.

Born 1931, in Mestghanem.

Painter, engraver, illustrator, painter (gouache), watercolourist. Designs for tapestries.

Abdallah Benanteur began his artistic studies at the school of fine art in Oran, completing them at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. He settled in Paris in 1953. From 1972 to 1976, he taught in the architecture department of the École des Beaux-Arts and at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris....

Article

Doche, Georges  

Egyptian, 20th century, male.

Born 1940, in Cairo.

Painter, watercolourist, illustrator, decorative artist. Decorative motifs. Stage costumes and sets, designs for jewellery.

A pupil at the Académie Julian, the École des Arts Decoratifs and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Georges Doche went on to show his work in several public exhibitions and, in particular, at the Salon des Artistes Indépendants in Paris, as well as at several private galleries in Geneva, Tokyo and London. He had a number of solo exhibitions, including in Paris (...

Article

El Mekki, Hatem  

Tunisian, 20th century, male.

Active also active in France.

Born 1918, in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Painter, illustrator, draughtsman. Cartoon films.

Hatem El Mekki was born in Indonesia but moved to Tunisia in 1924. He started to exhibit his works at the Salon Tunisien in 1934. In ...

Article

Elharar-Lemberg, Sylvia  

Moroccan, 20th – 21st century, female.

Active in France.

Born 1950, in Casablanca.

Painter, sculptor, sculptor of assemblages, draughtswoman, illustrator.

Sylvia Elharar-Lemberg studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the art teachers training college in Tel Aviv. Her paintings and drawings create the effect of transparency and obliteration, often starting from the square design of a tetragram. She also creates assemblages, such as mysterious grills, iron rods placed alongside labels and photographic plates. Sylvia Elharar-Lemberg has shown at group exhibitions in France since ...

Article

Haddad, Aïcha  

Algerian, 20th century, female.

Born in Bordj-Bou-Arreridj.

Painter, illustrator. Narrative scenes.

Aïcha Haddad was a pupil at the school of fine arts in Algiers and later taught design. She is a member of the national union of fine arts and the general union of Arab painters. She has participated in many group exhibitions since ...

Article

Hamsi, Boubeker  

Algerian, 20th – 21st century, male.

Active in Belgium from 1979, naturalised in 1990.

Born 22 April 1952, in Kabylia (Bejaïa).

Painter, illustrator, musician. Local scenes.

Born in the Kabylia region in Algeria, Boubeker was also a storyteller and singer. He paints the everyday life of shepherds, camel herders, women going about their work in the home and garden, creating compositions full of narrative detail with a feel of childlike poetry. Hamsi began exhibiting his paintings in ...

Article

Issiakhem, Mohamed Didou, or Ahmed  

Algerian, 20th century, male.

Born 17 June 1928, in Azeffouri; died 1 December 1985, in Algiers.

Painter, illustrator. Local figures.

Issiakhem studied at the school of fine arts in Algiers between 1948 and 1952, where his teacher was the miniaturist Mohamed Racim, before completing his artistic education at the school of fine arts in Paris ...

Article

Khadda, Mohamed  

Algerian, 20th century, male.

Born 14 March 1930, in Mostghanem; died 1991.

Painter, watercolourist, illustrator, engraver. Stage sets.

Mohamed Khadda, a self-taught painter, was a communist who wrote the theoretical treatise Component of a New Art ( Élément pour un art nouveau) on Algerian painting. Although Kadda's art has its basis in the abstract, he by no means renounces all contact with nature, which underpins all his landscape paintings. Unexpected signs, inspired by Arab-Berber symbols, invest his canvases with violence and emotion. By trade a typographer, Khadda took great pleasure in devising a form of abstract calligraphy that he constantly renewed. This technique is at its most unashamedly exuberant in his painting ...

Article

Le Houelleur, Kaïdin Monique  

French and Ivorian, 20th century, female.

Born in Hué, Vietnam.

Sculptor (marble/bronze/wood), installation artist, designer. Artists’ books.

Born of a Vietnamese mother and a French father, Dominique Le Houelleur holds a passion for Africa and lives and works in the Ivory Coast. A self-taught artist, she sought guidence from the Italian sculptor Giorgio Angeli in Querceta where she also met the Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi. In ...

Article

Mappa mundi  

Michael Curschmann

The medieval term mappa mundi (also forma mundi, historia/istoire) covers a broad array of maps of the world of which roughly 1100 survive. These have resisted systematic classification, but the clearly dominant type is one that aims at comprehensively symbolistic representation. Its early, schematic form is a disc composed of three continents surrounded and separated from one another by water (“T-O Map”) and associated with the three sons of Noah: Asia (Shem) occupies all of the upper half, Europe (Japhet) to the left and Africa (Ham) to the right share the lower half. Quadripartite cartographic schemes included the antipodes as a fourth continent, but the tripartite model was adopted by the large majority of the more developed world maps in use from the 11th century on and—with important variations—well into the Renaissance. While details were added as available space permitted, the Mediterranean continued to serve as the vertical axis and, with diminishing clarity, the rivers Don and Nile as the horizontal one. The map also continues to be ‘oriented’ towards Asia, where paradise sits at the very top. A circular ocean forms the perimeter and not infrequently the city of Jerusalem constitutes its centre....

Article

Morocco  

Article

Naccache, Edgard  

Tunisian, 20th century, male.

Active in France since 1962.

Born 15 December 1917, in Tunis.

Painter, illustrator. Murals.

Nouvelle Figuration, Figuration Narrative.

Edgard Naccache, a self-taught artist, started painting in 1931. In 1948 and 1961, he travelled in France; in 1957 he stayed in the Netherlands and the following year in Italy. He was a founding member of the ...

Article

Okeke, (Christopher) Uche(funa)  

Chika Okeke

(b Nimo, April 30, 1933).

Nigerian painter, sculptor, illustrator and poet. After attending Bishop Shanahan Secondary School, Orlu (1950–53), he received a degree in Fine Arts from the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Zaria (1957–61). In 1958 he founded the Asele Institute in Kafanchan for research in Nigerian art and culture. In the 1960s he was a member of the Ibadan Mbari Club, and a few years later formed the Enugu branch of Mbari that became a centre for artists of the Eastern region. His interest in Nigerian visual culture, especially that of his own Ibgo people, was most evident in his attention to and use of uli patterns (see Africa §V 3.) in his works, such as Oja Suite (1962; Nimo, Asele Inst.). He employed these organic, gestural lines to depict Igbo folktales as well as to produce the later Munich Suite (1963) during his travels in Germany. He was a founding member of the Zaria Art Society, which sought to create a Nigerian artistic expression based on a synthesis of indigenous and foreign art traditions. In ...

Article

Quaye, Jope Koffi  

Togolese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 4 October 1973, in Lomé.

Painter, illustrator.

Jope Koffi Quaye constantly explores his roots and the past, striving to make his art into a universal language. Characteristic of his work are dark figures which he places against a background of scraped light colours, adding a beak or paws to give them sense. He has exhibited in a number of group shows, including ...

Article

Racim, Mohamed  

Algerian, 20th century, male.

Born 24 June 1896, in Algiers; died 1 April 1975, murdered.

Painter, miniaturist, illustrator. Scenes with figures.

Orientalism.

Mohamed Racim was born to a family of successful engravers. He received early training from his father and at the age of 14 he joined the Cabinet de Dessin de l'Enseignement Professionel in Algiers. In 1917 he won a scholarship from the Casa Valasquez to visit Spain, Paris and London. Here he honed his technique in the manuscripts department of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and at the Iranian studies section in London. Having met the celebrated orientalist painter Etienne Dinet in 1914, he was asked to produce the frontispieces for his ...