Louvre Abu Dhabi
February 2021
February 17–June 12, 2021
In collaboration with Centre Georges Pompidou
Abstract artists set out to form a universal language that could be understood by all. That idea was influenced by the calligraphy of Asia and North Africa. There was something about Eastern script that fueled the imagination of Western artists. The Arab world was full of signs and symbols they could draw from. Both raw and precise, expressive and restrained, calligraphy unlocked a new way for them to express the inexpressible: emotion, empathy, ideas. In the museum’s first exhibition of 2021, the Louvre Abu Dhabi brings together masterworks from the Centre Georges Pompidou, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and other institutions to explore and discover how East and West come together on the same canvas.
The exhibition provides a rare chance to appreciate masterworks by Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Lee Ufan, André Masson, Dia Azzawi, and Jackson Pollock, alongside contemporary works by Sanki King, Mona Hatoum, and eL Seed. Paul Klee traveled to the region at two distinct periods of his career, both marking critical junctures in the artist’s stylistic development.