Maliheh Afnan 1935-2016

Maliheh Afnan was born in 1935 to Persian parents in Haifa, Palestine, where she lived until 1949. Her family then moved to Beirut, where she went to high school and later graduated with a BA from the American University of Beirut in 1955. In 1956 she moved to Washington DC, where she graduated with an MA in Fine Arts at the Corcoran School of Art (1962). From 1963-66 she lived in Kuwait and then returned to Beirut, where she lived until 1974. She spent the following 23 years in Paris, where she had numerous exhibitions, before settling in London in 1997.

 

Afnan's most recent solo exhibition was her retrospective Personnages, at Man Museo D'arte Provincia Di Nuoro, Sardinia, 2019 curated by Luigi Fassi.

 

Previous to that she presented Tracing Memories, Art Dubai Modern,  2016; Speak Memory, Rose Issa Projects, London, 2013; Traces, Faces, Places, Rose Issa Projects, London, 2010; Selected Works, England and Co, London, 2006; Maliheh Afnan: Retrospective, England and Co, London, 2000; and And Presented by Mark Tobey, Galerie Claire Brambach, Basel, Switzerland, 1971.  She has also exhibited at Galerie Mouvances, Paris, 1996; Théâtre de Beyrouth, Beirut, 1994; Galerie 10 Bonaparte, Paris, 1994; Galerie Arcadia, Paris, 1987; A&A Turner Galerie, Paris, 1982; Galerie Brigitte Schehadé, Paris and Galerie Principe-Anne Merlet, Paris,1978.

 

Select group shows include Nadia Saikali & Her Contemporaries, Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE, 2025; Signs, Gestures, Words: Between Writing and Image, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany, 2025; From the Baroque to Today: New Acquisitions of Works on Paper, The Courtauld Gallery, London, UK, 2024; Arab Presences: Modern Art and Decolonisation: Paris 1908–1988, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, 2024; Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940–70, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK, 2023; Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s, The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA, 2022; Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, USA, 2020; The Symmetry of Fragility, Fondazione ICA Milano, Milan, Italy (online/virtual exhibition), 2020; À la plume, au pinceau, au crayon: dessins du monde arabe, Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA), Paris, France, 2019; A Century in Flux, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE, 2018; Paper Plains, Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin, Germany, 2015; Asemic, Cultuurcentrum Brugge, Brugge, 2014; Asemic, Cultuurcentrum Brugge, Brugge, 2014; The Blue Route: Journeys and Beauty from the Mediterranean to China, Boghossian Foundation, Brussels, 2013; Hope Map, Cuulturcentrum, Bruges, 2013; The Art of Writing, Kurhaus Kolonnade, Wiesbaden, 2011; Zendegi: Twelve Contemporary Iranian Artists , Beirut Exhibition Center, Beirut, 2011; Miragens, touring exhibition at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Brasilia, Brazil, 2011; Modern Times – Responding to Chaos, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge and De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-On-Sea, UK, 2010; Taswir: Pictorial Mappings of Islam and Modernity, Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum, Berlin, 2009; Re-Orientations: Contemporary Arab Representations, European Parliament, Brussels, 2008; Routes, Waterhouse & Dodd, London, 2008; Word into Art, Dubai, 2008; The Dance of Pen and Ink, The State Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow and The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, 2007; Routes, the British Museum, London,2006; Iranian Contemporary Art, Curve Gallery, Barbican Centre, London,  2001; Salon d’Automne, Thorigny-Sur-Marne, France, 1994; Collecting 20th-Century Art, The British Museum, London, 1991; and Painting and Sculpture at the End of the 20th Century, European Cultural Centre of Delphi, 1988. 

 

Afnan’s work is in several public collections, including, Tate, London, UK; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, France; The Courtauld Institute, London, UK; The Written Art Collection, Germany; The Metropolitan Museum, New York; The British Museum, London; the Institut du Monde Arabe, and the Barjeel Art Collection, Sharjah. 

 

She has also featured in several publications, most recently Familiar Faces (2013, Rose Issa Projects) and Maliheh Afnan: Traces, Faces, Places (2010, Al Saqi Books & Beyond Art Productions).

 

Maliheh Afnan passed away in London in January 2016.