Omar El-Nagdi (Egyptian, b. 1931)

The work of Omar El-Nagdi from the 1960s and 1970s was based on the forms of Arabic calligraphy. The present painting is a composition formed entirely by the repetition of the Arabic numeral one , which is indistinguishable in appearance from the Arabic letter alef, the first letter in the alphabet. In Islamic traditions the "One" symbolises the indivisible nature of the Divine, and Nagdi's countless repetition of the same character within this composition visually emphasises this concept.