Hassan Massoudy is an artist for whom the word itself remains the most sublime creative force.  He speaks of this work as a ”a field of energy subjected to the rhythm that I impose on the movement of the letters…these dream images…unfold as the leaves unfurl when the seed becomes a tree…a group of dancers obeying the choreographer ‘s command”¹.

After having undertaken a rigorous apprenticeship with master calligraphers in Iraq as a child, Massoudy moved to Paris in 1969, where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

His work features the texts of a divers range of writers, from poet Charles Baudelaire and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Virgil and Ibn ‘Arabi.  A sense of balance prevails in his work, whether between erudite discipline and artistic experimentation, or as played out through his understanding of “the line as a dynamic force…[which] must reflect two things:  on the one hand strength and vigour, on the other abandon and grace”.²

Massoudy, Hassan (2004) Calligraphies d’amour, Paris:  Albin Michel. Reproduced at http://perso.orange.fr/hassan.massoudy/english.ht