Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

Lot 459

Ali Omar Ermes
(Libya, born 1945)
Untitled (Allah)

8 April 2014, 10:30 BST
London, New Bond Street

£16,000 - £20,000

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Islamic and Indian Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Ask about this lot

Ali Omar Ermes (Libya, born 1945)

Untitled (Allah)
acrylic on paper, framed
signed and dated "1399/1979" in Arabic (lower right), executed in 1979
27 x 48cm (10 5/8 x 18 7/8in).

Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, London

Bonhams are pleased to offer a rare and distinguished work by one of the Middle East's most accomplished living artists, Ali Omar Ermes. Executed in 1979, the present lot is the earliest work by Ermes ever to be offered at auction.

A consummate calligrapher, Ermes is one of the most learned and technically literate artists in his milieu. Deeply religious and dedicated to the ethical, mysterious and transcendental dimensions of Arabic calligraphy, Ermes focuses both on the architecture of the Arabic letterform and it spiritual associations.

The present work is atypical both in terms of size, form and content. In place of Ermes' customary singular figures, which are often used as symbols of particular divine attributes, the present work depicts the name of God itself, a far more direct and immediate gesture. The name of Allah, however, is not rendered in full, with its characters spilling over the sheet, demonstrating not only the boundless aspect of the divine, but indicating that God himself is not perceivable in his entirety.

In scale, it is considerably more intimate than his larger studies, a reflection of the deeply personal and internal elements of the Sufi philosophy that Ermes' is so inspired by.

For a similar work in the collection of the British Museum, see East-West Objects Between Cultures, Tate Britain, September 2006.

Additional information

Bid now on these items

Francis Newton Souza(India, 1924-2002)Untitled (Head)