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136 - Nja MAHDAOUI (Tunis, 1937) Untitled, circa 1975 India ink an…
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Estimate €6,000 - €10,000
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Nja MAHDAOUI (Tunis, 1937) Untitled, circa 1975 India ink and gold leaf on parchment paper 68.5 x 49.5 cm Signed 'Nja' in Arabic, lower right *** India ink and gold leaf on vellum, signed lower right in Arabic (27 × 19½ in.) Painted circa 1975 We would like to thank the Mahdaoui Foundation for kindly confirming the authenticity of this work. A certificate of authenticity may be issued at the buyer's expense. Provenance : Private collection, France This piece belongs to the first series of a major series on parchment paper, begun in 1972 and continued until the early 1990s, based around two main formats: 50 × 70 cm and 70 × 100 cm. "I didn't approach the graphic sign to use it as a 'mode' of the moment or to use it as an element of civilisation - as a contribution, or addition, to my plastic work... I studied at length the problem of the calligraphic sign and its possible consequences, both from the linguistic point of view and the significance of the word, and from the visual point of view and the immediacy of sensation - external and internal. So it was after a number of personal experiments in painting - collage, free expression, gestalt painting, integrating natural elements and using molten paint - that I had to realise that a human being belonging to a given civilisation must necessarily (be) - and to be, to exist globally, implies a double intellectual and conceptual effort, in terms of the way of assuming one's self, let me explain. It was somewhere in Europe, in Milan, I think, during an international exhibition at the Galerie Cortina, around 1967, that I realised that by trying so hard to be universal, I was in danger of dissolving into a WHOLE, where the self (individual, civilisation) slipped in favour of other cultures... I then opted, step by step, to question my practical approach to art, which led me to think more deeply about This required me to make an extraordinary effort, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view, because before tackling the technique of the sign element, I had to learn the different calligraphic techniques from scratch: 1° How to use the sign without it carrying its own meaning or scholarly discourse? Any word, any phraseology imposes an imaginary suggestion and distances the viewer (I) from the relationship between the work and the individual. I have therefore eliminated all verbal meaning from the outset. The letter loses its role as the bearer of a signifying message and becomes a signified, abstract element. 2° I direct my research towards free surfaces, so that the sign itself, freed and emptied of dialectical content, simply imposes an almost physical and sensual spatial architecture. Nja Mahdaoui, "À propos de ma démarche picturale", Revue Echanges, Tunis, 1980, pp. 139-141. Born in Tunisia in 1937, Nja Mahdaoui trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome (graduating in 1967), then at the École du Louvre (1968) and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. He began exhibiting in 1959 and returned to Tunisia permanently in 1977. Internationally recognised as the "choreographer of letters", he played a pioneering role in the development of calligraphic abstraction: freeing the Arabic letter from its scriptural function to turn it into a purely visual, musical and rhythmic form, he developed a language of "calligrams" and "graphemes" devoid of any literal content - what he himself called a form of writing emancipated from meaning. His work, which spans more than six decades, embraces media as diverse as parchment, ceramics, textiles, sculpture and stained glass. He has completed numerous monumental commissions - Jeddah and Riyadh (1981-1984), the campus of KAUST University in Saudi Arabia (2010), Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park (2018) - and received the Grand Prix of the Tunisian Ministry of Culture (2006) and the UNESCO Prize for Arab Crafts (2005). His work can be found in the collections of the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Institut du Monde Arabe, the Mathaf and the Barjeel Foundation.
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About the sale Arab, African & Indian Modernities
Auction location
Auction time 06/18/2026 at 2:30 PM
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