De Stijl — Kufic

mondrian arabic abstract geometric Kufi minimal square vibrant blue hybrid

Piet Mondrian

A Dutch artist (1872 – 1944) and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being one of the pioneers of 20th-century abstract art, as he changed his artistic direction from the figurative painting to an increasingly abstract style, until he reached a point where his artistic vocabulary was reduced to simple and absolute geometric elements.

Mondrian's art was highly utopian and was concerned with a search for universal values and aesthetics. He proclaimed in 1914: "Art is higher than reality and has no direct relation to reality." To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the

spiritual. We find ourselves in the presence of an abstract art. Art should be above reality, otherwise it would have no value for man." His art, however, always remained rooted in nature.

De Stijl

Mondrian was a contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which he co-founded with

Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neoplasticism.

This was the new 'pure plastic art' which he believed was necessary in order to create 'universal beauty'. To express this, Mondrian eventually decided to limit his formal vocabulary to the three primary colors (red, blue and yellow), the three primary values (black, white and gray) and the two primary directions (horizontal and vertical).

* Original composition with Double Line and Yellow, 1932, Piet Mondrian

— Contemporary contribution with a Typographic Name "Mondrian" in Arabic Letters, 2016, Muhammad ElMahdy

kufic script

Kufic Script is the main oldest calligraphy type form among the various diversity of Arabic Scripts within ancient Arabian civilization, and consists of a modified form of the "Old Nebtian Script" which derived from "Hijazi Script", whose origin may in order be traced to "Hirian", "Nebtian" or "Anbarian". Kufic developed around the end of the 7th century in Kuffa, Iraq, from which it takes its name. Until about the 11th century it was the main script used to copy The Holy Qur'ans. Professional copyists employed a particular form of Kufic for reproducing the earliest surviving copies of the Qur'an.

The challenge

I believe Arabic calligraphy is flexible enough to be applied within any design direction or art movement.

In this project, I tried to merge Mondrian's solid composition with Geometric Kufic script in order to represent the applicability, and design thinking of Arabic Typography.

Hope this could be the Eastern Era of De Stijl Movement.