Mustafa al-Hallaj

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Self-portrait
segment from "Self-portrait as a man, God and the devil"
Mustafa al-Hallaj , 1994-2002
Masonite cut
36 × 9000 cm

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Mustafa al-Hallaj ( Arabic مصطفى الحلاج Mustafā al-Hallādsch , DMG Muṣṭafā al-Ḥallāǧ ; *  1938 in Salama , Jaffa , then Mandate Palestine ; †  December 17, 2002 in Damascus , Syria ) was an Arab visual artist . al-Hallaj was considered a pioneer and icon of Arab contemporary graphic art .

Life

Mustafa al-Hallaj was born in Salama, a small village in what was then Jaffa District, in 1938. At the age of ten he experienced the Nakba , during which his family fled to Egypt via Ramallah , Damascus and Beirut . There he received his training as a sculptor, first at the College of Fine Arts in Cairo and then at the Luxor Atelier for Postgraduate Studies in Luxor , where he specialized in ancient Egyptian , Canaanite and Phoenician art.

To take part in the Palestinian revolutionary movement, al-Hallaj went on to Damascus and in 1974 to the center of artistic and revolutionary events in Beirut. When he left Beirut again during the Lebanon War in 1982 to move back to Damascus, 25,000 of his prints were lost in a bomb attack, the originals of his masonite and woodblock prints have been preserved. From then on he stayed in Damascus, where he opened a gallery in 1987 as a homage to Naji al-Ali . In 2002, Mustafa al-Hallaj died as a result of a fire in his gallery after trying to save his works from the flames.

Artistic creation

al-Hallaj was only active as a sculptor for a short time, instead he focused his work on images, in particular on printing techniques such as woodcut . A major reason for this was the significantly lower production costs and the ability to distribute the prints cheaply and in large numbers and thus to find a considerably larger audience. But he was also fascinated by the proximity of the engraving to the inscription and the act of writing. The upright, naked human figures that frequently appear in his works therefore also refer to the letter Alif, which often appears in Arabic typesetting . In addition to such black and white reliefs, al-Hallaj also occasionally produced colored watercolors.

In his works and techniques, al-Hallaj built a bridge between antiquity and modernity, incorporating Indian, Persian and Arabic traditions as well as Canaanite legends or the recent history of the Palestine region . The hybrid beings in al-Hallaj's fantastic and folkloric symbolism describes Tex Kerschen, curator of Made in Palestine titled exhibition at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art in Houston than in Hieronymus Bosch reminiscent. Kerschen describes his “ masterpiece ”, the approximately 100 m long masonite cut Self-Portrait as Man, God and the Devil , which cinematographically summarizes the history of the Palestinian people, as a “ fable ” and “imaginary detachment from political regimes and time”.

Samia Halaby , a Palestinian art scholar and painter, emphasizes that in al-Hallaj's works the outlines in the background are always as carefully worked out as in the foreground. In the prints, in which contours appear simplified and objects flattened, the figures are arranged in such a way that they tell a visual story. She explains this as a reference to al-Hallaj's time in Luxor and his influences from ancient Egyptian bas-relief and Arabic calligraphy .

meaning

Mustafa al-Hallaj was known as شيخ الفنانين / šayḫ al-fannānīn  / 'Master of Artists' and was considered a pioneer of Palestinian plastic art. His contribution to the creation of theفن المقاومة / fann al-muqāwama  / 'Art of Resistance', which expresses the political dimension of his work.

al-Hallaj was the subject of several exhibitions both during his lifetime and posthumously. In addition to solo exhibitions in Arab countries in particular, he also took part in group exhibitions in Amsterdam, Moscow and Oslo. 1995 he was at the Biennale of Sharjah the award International honor awarded, other awards he received in the 1960s in Egypt and in 1999 at the Biennale of Latakia in Syria. He was a founding member of the General Union of Palestinian Writers and Journalists .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nazīh Ḫāṭir:الراحل في مركبه الفرعوني. an-Nahar , December 22, 2002
  2. ↑ Kamal Boullata: Palestinian Art. From 1850 to the Present. Saqi, London 2009, p. 133 ff.
  3. ↑ Tex Kerschen: Made in Palestine: Mustafa Al Hallaj. stationmuseum.com
  4. ↑ Samia Halaby: Mustafa al-Hallaj: Master of the Print and Master of Ceremonies. jadaliyya.com, May 31, 2013
  5. ↑ Mustafa al Hallaj. ( Memento of February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Galeri Manâ; Palestinian Personalities: Mustafa al-Hallaj. ( Memento of the original from January 28, 1999 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. passia.org @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.passia.org
  6. ↑ ʿAmmār Ḥasan:الفنان مصطفى الحلاج في ذكرى رحيله التاسعة الشعلة لا تزال متقدة! alnhdah.com, January 9, 2012
  7. ^ Palestinian Personalities: Mustafa al-Hallaj . ( Memento of the original from January 28, 1999 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. passia.org @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.passia.org
personal data
SURNAME al-Hallaj, Mustafa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES مصطفى الحلاج (Arabic name); al-Ḥallāǧ, Muṣṭafā (scientific transcription)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Arab visual artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Salama , Jaffa , then Mandate Palestine
DATE OF DEATH December 17, 2002
Place of death Damascus , Syria