Calligraphy

The classical Arab art form. Traditional Arabic calligraphy — practiced for over a thousand years by master calligraphers known as khattatun — renders Quranic verse, poetry, and historical texts in any of the major scripts: Thuluth, Naskh, Diwani, Kufic, Maghrebi, and others. Modern Arab calligraphers continue this living tradition, applying centuries of script convention to contemporary works of devotion, abstraction, and political voice. Distinct from Calligraphic Abstraction — which uses letterforms as the basis for modernist abstract painting — classical calligraphy preserves the legibility and discipline of the script while extending its expressive range. The Artsamy calligraphy collection includes both traditional masters and contemporary innovators in this enduring form.