Abstract art: What is commonly said of Madiha Omar's art is that it is abstract, inspired by Arabic calligraphy... The artist arrived at a certain truth: that the Arabic alphabet has abstract meanings, symbolic in their essence, and that every letter has its own moving personality and its individuality, capable of being an abstract image that contributes to the creation of a complete picture. Arabic script, in her view, holds an immense capacity for expressing thought and the feelings of mind and heart, and stores up a fertile material for the work of art, which is forever seeking out the new, yearning for creation, and shrinking from rigidity...
Each letter has its meaning? Every letter of the Arabic alphabet, says Madiha, conveys a particular meaning, and here is a spacious source of inspiration. The letter 'ayn, for example, which has no counterpart in English, is a strong, active letter; in Arabic it carries two meanings: on the one hand it means the spring of water, and on the other, the eye that sees. And the letter lam, whose English counterpart is (L), expresses delicate rhyth
mic movements.
She has realistic paintings: I said that Madiha Omar's art is abstract in its origin; yet she has realistic paintings of great beauty. Here her colors are calm, serene in their joy, reminding you of the atmosphere of English painting..
Since 1948 she has gone on showing her paintings to the public of art lovers and explaining her idea to them. She has exhibited in Washington, and in San Francisco, Baghdad, Istanbul, and Beirut..
In appreciation of her art, Mrs. Eva Malik bought for the Lebanese House in Washington two of her paintings representing abstract art inspired by the Arabic letters.
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Of imitator artists we have a swarming army; but Madiha belongs to a school
of her own imagination's and her own hand's making. She constellates the idea, in colors, after her inventive fashion, and releases it as an open field for enamored eyes forever looking out for the wonders of truth and beauty!
Before her paintings: What seizes you in her paintings is her skill in blending the two arts, Eastern and Western — a skill acquired from an inherited
fineness of taste, from long travels, and from contemplation of the faces of the universe. But she has not imitated; she has invented — and there lies her distinction over hundreds of artists perplexed among the many doctrines of art.
You are seized, too, by the magic of her colors, harmonious, keeping step one with another, with a preference for the dark shades, so that you and the artist seem to be in enchanted worlds out of the Thousand and One Nights... "The Hanging Gardens of Babylon," "Eyes of the Night," "Colors in the Sea," "The Atomic Bomb," and "Guidance..."
"Guidance"
Two paintings of abstract art inspired by Arabic calligraphy
"A Lebanese House"
One of her realistic paintings