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Aa, Edith van der  

Dutch, 20th century, female.

Born in Cilacap (Java), Indonesia.

Painter. Portraits, still-lifes.

Edith van der Aa exhibited some still-lifes and her Portrait of A.H. Lemaître at the Paris Salon des Indépendants in the 1930s.

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Aali, Halil  

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Abad, Pacita  

Filipina, 20th–21st century, female.

Born 5 October 1946, in Basco, Batanes, the Philippines; died 7 December 2004, in Singapore.

Painter, draughtsman, collagist.

Born to a political family, Abad originally studied political science and law. As a student she organised protests against the fraudulent elections of 1969 that kept Ferdinand Marcos in office as president of the Philippines. As a result of her activism, Abad’s house was targeted, and she left the Philippines to continue her education in the USA. In 1973 she spent 12 months travelling through Asia, from Turkey to the Philippines. She later described how the clothing and adornments she observed on her travels would inspire her signature trapunto paintings. Returning home in 1974, Abad decided to become an artist.

Throughout her life Abad was an inveterate traveller. She was proud to say she had visited more than 100 countries. She lived or spent long periods in Washington, DC, New York, Boston, Bangladesh, Sudan, Bangkok, New Guinea, Indonesia, Singapore, and many other countries and regions. Her work was openly infused by what she saw and was detailed in the various books she made full of colourful drawings and collages. She believed that absorbing images and techniques from Korea, Indonesia, New Guinea, and other cultural settings would make her work globally comprehensible. Scuba diving also gave her immersive experiences which she sought to replicate in her work....

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Abaneri  

Walter Smith

[anc. Abhānagari]

Temple site in north-eastern Rajasthan, India. It contains the fragmentary remains of two major monuments of the 8th century ad. The Chand Baori, a stepped ritual bathing tank c. 19 m deep, was probably built by Raja Chandra, from whom its name derives; an enclosing verandah dates to the 17th century. Although the Harshatmata Temple also dates to the 8th century, or early 9th, according to some scholars, a modern temple has been built over the original foundations, which include a broad platform and the lower walls of the original monument. A remarkable sequence of sculptures, showing primarily secular scenes, survives. These include kings with courtiers, musicians and couples (see Indian subcontinent, fig.). The figural scenes are framed by pilasters carved with floral motifs and capped by elaborate interlaced pediments employing the gavākṣa (Skt: ‘cow’s-eye’) motif.

The sculpture of Abaneri extensively illustrates a phase of sculptural development midway between the Gupta style of the Mathura region and the abstracted linearized style adopted in northern India from the 10th century. Its style, often referred to as naturalistic, renders the figure with an energetic elasticity conveying both potential and actual movement. The profuse details, including facial expressions and gestures, are carved with great delicacy, and the high relief utilizes deep undercutting. Several of the ancient sculptures have been embedded into the walls of the modern temple, and numerous fragments—possibly from other temples no longer extant—lie about the site. Other pieces, including images of deities such as Ganesha, Durga and Gaja-Lakshmi and scenes from the life of Krishna, have been removed to the Archaeological Museum in Amer....

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Abarquh  

[Abarqūh]

Iranian town in northern Fars province. A prosperous centre in medieval times, by the 10th century it was fortified with a citadel and had a congregational mosque. The octagonal tower of mortared stone known as the Gunbad-i ‛Ali was erected, according to its inscription, by a Daylamite prince in 1056–7 to contain the remains of his parents. The Masjid-i Birun, a mosque to the south of the town, may be slightly earlier, although it has many later additions. The congregational mosque (rest.), with four iwans around a rectangular court, dates mostly to the 14th century, although the base of the dome chamber probably belongs to the 12th-century mosque. The many mihrabs within the mosque include a particularly fine stucco example (1338). There are also several mud-brick tombs in the town. These square structures have plain exteriors and plastered and painted interiors. One of the earliest is the tomb of Pir Hamza Sabzpush (12th century); the finest was that of Hasan ibn Kay Khusraw (...

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Abbas, Akeel  

Iraqi, 20th – 21st century, male.

Active since 1974 active in France.

Born 12 September 1948, in Shamyah (Mesopotamia).

Painter.

Akeel Abbas has shown his works in a number of group exhibitions, including the 2nd Arab Biennale, Kuwait in 1971; Centre Culturel Irakien, Paris in 1975...

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Shaykh ‛Abbasi  

Eleanor Sims

[Shaykh ‛Abbāsī]

(fl 1650–84).

Persian painter. He was one of a small group of artists working in Iran in the second half of the 17th century who painted in an eclectic manner that drew on European images and Mughal Indian styles (see Islamic art, §III, 4(vi)(a)). He appears to have been the earliest of this group, which included Muhammad Zaman and ‛Aliquli Jabbadar, to integrate these ‘exotic’ elements into his work. He invariably inscribed his work with the punning Persian phrase Bahā girift chū gardīd Shaykh ‛Abbāsī (‘It [He] acquired worth when he became Shaykh ‛Abbasi’). The honorific it contains (‛Abbasi; also a type of coin, whence the pun) suggests that he was in the service of Shah ‛Abbas II (reg 1642–66). He also signed paintings during the reign of Shah Sulayman (reg 1666–94).

Shaykh ‛Abbasi illustrated manuscripts and painted miniatures on single leaves of paper and, almost certainly, on lacquered papier-mâché objects, such as penboxes and mirror cases. More than 15 of his known paintings are signed, 8 in one manuscript (Baltimore, MD, Walters A. Mus., MS. W.668), and 25 can be attributed to him. His subjects include portraits of Safavid and Mughal rulers and of the Virgin and Child copied from European prints. His style is unmistakable, combining sure draughtsmanship with pale, transparent colour washes. Unlike Muhammad Zaman, he had a minimal interest in illusionism, restricting himself to darkening the edges of trees and buildings along one side (usually the right). His figures, especially heads and faces, are Indian in appearance as well as in the stippled manner in which they are drawn. His later pictures seem more Indian than his earlier work; Zebrowski proposed a connection with Golconda painting (...

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Abbasid  

Robert Hillenbrand

[‛Abbasid]

Islamic dynasty that ruled from several capitals in Iraq between ad 749 and 1258. The Abbasids traced their descent from al-‛Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, and were thus able to claim a legitimacy that their predecessors had lacked (see Umayyad, §1). The Abbasids rose to power in north-east Iran by channelling disaffection with Umayyad rule, but they soon established their capitals in a more central location, founding Baghdad in 762. Although they initially encouraged the support of Shi‛ites, the Abbasids quickly distanced themselves from their erstwhile allies to become champions of orthodoxy. Upon accession, each caliph adopted an honorific title, somewhat like a regnal name, by which he was later known. For the first two centuries, the Abbasids’ power was pre-eminent, and their names were invoked from the Atlantic to western Central Asia. From the middle of the 10th century, however, real power was transferred to a succession of Persian and Turkish dynasts (...

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Abboud, Shafic, Chafic, Chafik or Shafik  

Lebanese, 20th century, male.

Active from 1947 in France.

Born 22 November 1926, in El Mhaidthe, near Bikfaya; died 9 April 2004, in Paris.

Painter, engraver.

Shafic Abboud set out to become an engineer, but broke off his studies in his third year at the French school of engineering in Beirut in order to study drawing and composition at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in ...

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Abd al Havy  

Persian School, 14th – 15th century, male.

Active at the end of the 14th and at the beginning of the 15th century.

Painter.

Abd al Havy was a pupil of Shams al Din. In 1393, Tamburlaine (Timur) took him to Samarkand, where it is believed that he ran the city’s artistic workshops. No work has been attributed to him with any certainty....

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Abdous Samad  

Persian School, 16th century, male.

Active at the end of the 16th century.

Born to a family originally from Shiraz.

Painter, draughtsman.

Abdous Samad worked at the Persian court and while there was chosen by the Mogul Emperor Humayun to teach drawing both to himself and to his son Akbar, the heir to the throne. He took over from Mir Sayid Ali and completed the illumination of the poet Amir-Hamzah, who recounted the adventures of the uncle of Mohammed. He ended his days as head of the royal treasury....

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Abdul, Lida  

Sarah Urist Green

(b Kabul, June 5, 1973).

Afghan video and performance artist and photographer, active also in the USA. After fleeing Soviet-occupied Kabul with her family in the late 1980s, Abdul lived as a refugee in Germany and India before moving to Southern California. She received a BA in Political Science and Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton, and an MFA at the University of California, Irvine, in 2000. Abdul first returned to a post-Taliban Afghanistan in 2001, where she encountered a place and people transformed by decades of violence and unrest. Since that time, Abdul has made work in Kabul and Los Angeles, staging herself in performances and creating performance-based video works and photography that explore ideas of home and the interconnection between architecture and identity.

Beginning in the late 1990s, Abdul made emotionally intense performance art informed by that of Yugoslavian artist Marina Abramović and Cuban-born American artist Ana Mendieta. At the time unable to travel to Afghanistan, Abdul created and documented performances in Los Angeles that probed her position as Afghan, female, Muslim, a refugee and a transnational artist. In ...

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Abdul-Medjid Effendi  

Turkish, 19th–20th century, male.

Born 29 May 1868, in Constantinople (now Istanbul); died 23 August 1944, in Paris.

Painter and collector. Portraits, genre scenes, landscapes.

Abdul-Medjid was the son of Sultan Abdülaziz, and later Crown Prince of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph. He was taught painting by Fausto Zonaro, an Italian artist who worked in the Ottoman court ...

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Çigdem Kafesçioglu and Walter B. Denny

In 

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Abdullah, R. Basuki or Basoeki  

Indonesian, 20th century, male.

Born 1915, in Surakarta (Java); died 1992.

Painter, pastellist. Figures, nudes, portraits, scenes with figures, genre scenes, landscapes.

The son of Abdullah Soerjosoebroto, also a painter, Basuki Abdullah studied at the fine arts academy in The Hague. He travelled to Paris and Rome, and his work has been exhibited in Bangkok, Malaya, Japan, the Netherlands, England and Portugal. He is known as a portrait painter, particularly for his paintings of beautiful Indonesian women, but also painted rural flora and fauna, landscapes and court scenes....

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Abdullah, Soedjono  

Indonesian, 20th century, male.

Born 1911; died 1991.

Painter. Figures, landscapes.

Abdullah Soedjono made a name for himself as a painter of Indonesian landscapes.

Amsterdam, 21 April 1993: Indonesian Land­scape with the Volcano Merapi (1975, oil on canvas, 38¾ × 88½ ins/98.5 × 225 cm) ...

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Abdus Samad (Khwaja)  

Indian, 16th century, male.

Painter, miniaturist.

Abdus Samad was born in Shiraz, Iran. He was a renowned painter, calligrapher, and an influential figure in miniature painting. He was brought, along with Mir Sayyid Ali, to India by the Mughal emperor Humayun (1530–1540 and 1555–1556...

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Abe, Kongo  

Japanese, 20th century, male.

Born 1900, in Tokyo.

Painter.

Kongo Abe spent time in France when Surrealism was emerging. The movement had a great influence on him and he introduced Surrealist ideas to Japan on his return.

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Abe, Nobuya  

Japanese, 20th century, male.

Born 1913, in Niigata.

Painter.

Nobuya Abe was self-taught. He was one of the founders of the Bunka Kyokai (Art Culture Association). Although traditional in origin, his painting evolved into informal abstraction. His work has been represented in numerous exhibitions throughout the world, including the São Paulo Biennale in ...