Aatifi Afghanistan-Germany, b. 1965
Works
Biography
Aatifi (born 1965) is a contemporary Afghan-German painter, printmaker and calligrapher. He was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He lives and works in Bielefeld, Germany. His works contain abstracted Arabian calligraphy and modern European influences.
After graduating as a master calligrapher early, he moved to Kabul in 1982. There he finished High School, opened a workshop shortly after and built a school for drawing and calligraphy. He then entered the Kabul University's Fine Arts Faculty in 1989 to become a painter. In the same year, he was awarded the Prize for Calligraphy and Composition by the Afghan Ministry of Culture and was awarded a second time the year after. In 1991, he was awarded first place by the artists group Hakim Naser Khesraw Balkhi. In 1992, he finished his studies in Kabul. Moving to Germany in 1995, Aatifi became a member of the Sächsischer Künstlerbund and worked as a stipendiary at Moritzburg Castle in 1997. He then got recognized by painter and professor Siegfried Klotzwho offered him classes in 1997/98 at Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. In the late 1990s Aatifi moved to Bielefeld where he set up his studio to work and to create art to the present day.
Invited by director Stefan Weber, Aatifi curated an exhibition in the Museum für Islamische Kunst in the Pergamon Museum Berlin in 2015 titled Aatifi - News from Afghanistan. Specialised in preserving and presenting ancient Islamic art, Weber's decision to implement contemporary paintings on a large scale in the museum for the first time was based on Aatifi's approach towards calligraphy. "Aatifi comes from a living tradition, which also distinguishes him from a number of contemporary artists [ ... ]. The strengths of the tradition - i.e. the foundations of classical aesthetics in calligraphy - are not always known, nor is the freedom of distancing oneself from these understood. That's why poor imitations of cultural archetypes are produced. Not so with Aatifi. Aatifi pulls off the balancing act [ ... ]".
Exhibitions
Events
Bibliography
Aatifi
Untitled, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
120 x 150 cm
- Kunibert Bering, Rolf Niehoff: Horizont 1, Bilder der Gegenwart – Globalisierung und Migration.In: Horizonte der Bild-Kunst-Geschichte, Part 1, 1st edition, Athena-Verlag, Oberhausen 2018.
- Julia Thieke: Zwischen Lapislazuli und Lithium. Künstlerportrait Aatifi. In: Kunst & Material[magazine], 2016.
- Martina Bauer (Ed.): Aatifi – News from Afghanistan [exhibition catalogue], Kerber Verlag, 2015.
- Kunstverein Zwickau e.V. (Ed.): Internationales Grafiksymposium Zwickau Zebra 5. [exhibition catalogue] 2013.
- The Graphic Arts Museum of Schreiner Foundation (Ed.): Von Kaiserblau bis Luxusschwarz.[exhibition catalogue] Verlag Grafik Museum Stiftung Schreiner, 2011.
- Friederike Schir, Reiner Kuhn, Manuel Schroeder, Inga Schubert-Hartmann (Eds.): Metakom.[exhibition catalogue], Kettler, 2011.