Osman Waqialla

Osman Waqialla
Birth name	Osman Waqialla
Born	1925
Origin	Rufa'a, Sudan
Died	4 January 2007 Sudan
Occupations	calligrapher
Years active	1940s -2000s

Osman Waqialla (1925-4 January 2007), Arabic: عثمان وقيع الله‎, Sudanese artist, calligrapher.

Early life and career

Waqialla was born in Rufa'a, in Central Sudan, Al Jazirah state on the banks of the Blue Nile.He graduated from the School of Design, Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum, Sudan (1945). In 1946 received a scholarship and moved to England to joined Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London and finished his studied in 1949. Later he moved to Egypt, where he trained as a calligrapher under the master Sayyid Muhammed Ibrahim (d.1994) at the School of Arabic Calligraphy in Cairo. Then he moved to Sudan, where he taught at the College of Fine and Applied Art in Khartoum at the beginning of 1950s. From 1954 to 1964 he founded Studio Osman as a meeting place for artists and intellectuals in Sudan. At that time he received several commissions, including calligraphic designs for the first Sudanese currency, and he is considered one of the first artists in modern art movement in Sudan to explore calligraphy. In 1967 he moved to England and worked as a consultant calligrapher to the firm of banknote makers, De La Rue. His work has been exhibited in Africa, the Middle East, the United States and Europe, including the touring exhibition Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa, which began at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1995. He returned to Sudan a few years ago, where he died on Thursday January 4, 2007.

References

The British Museum

Persondata
Name	Waqialla, Osman
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1925
Place of birth
Date of death	4 January 2007
Place of death