Hassan Massoudy

In 2005 he met the dancer and choreographer Carolyn Carlson, and the musician Kudsi Erguner. Together with three other dancers and three other musicians, they created the show "Metaphore", a harmony of music, dance and calligraphy. Massoudy has continued to live in France.

In 1995, he was involved in the design of the stage set for the ballet "Selim" with the dancer Kader Belarbi from the Opera de Paris and the singer Houria Aichi on a choreography from Kalemenis.

Massoudy often uses quotations from classic and modern writers as the inspiration for his work. One such work is Woman is a Ray of Divine Light painted in 1987, which is based on the words of a 13th-century Sufi poet, Rumi. For Massoudy, reproducing a poem in calligraphy means more than simply presenting it in a particular style, rather it enables him to grasp the inner meaning of the words.

He collaborated with couturier Azzedine Alaïa for his Autumn-Winter collection 1986/1987.

In 1972, he created, with the actor Guy Jacquet and later the musician Fawzi Al Aiedy, Arabesque, a public performance combining music, poetry and live calligraphies projected on a screen .

In 1969 he fled Iraq for France, and after arriving in Paris in 1969, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts where he studied figurative painting. However, he continued to work on calligraphy and paid for his studies, by doing headlines in calligraphy for Arabic magazines.

Hassan Massoudy (حسن المسعود الخطاط), born in 1944, is an Iraqi painter and calligrapher, considered by the French writer Michel Tournier as the "greatest living Calligrapher", currently lives in Paris. His work has influenced a generation of calligraffiti artists.

Hassan Massoudy was born in 1944 in Najaf, central Iraq, and grew up in a traditional society. He moved to Baghdad in 1961, where he was apprenticed to various calligraphers and exhibited a talent for classic Arabic calligraphy.