Summary
Palestinian artist and scholar Kamal Boullata passed away in Berlin Wednesday.
Boullata was born in Jerusalem in 1942 and the Palestinian capital's visual culture was a primary inspiration for his work.
After studying fine art in Rome at the Accademia di Belle Arti in 1965, Boullata received a Master of Fine Arts from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1971 .
His essay "Art in the Time of the Palestinian Revolution," published in the Lebanese journal Mawaqif in January 1971, sketches how authentic revolutionary Palestinian art should look: not the easily sold rehashing of Palestinian motifs, but artwork that moves forward into new forms and ideas.
In the '70s and '80s, Boullata was part of the "hurufiyya movement," in which Arab artists sought to infuse Arabic calligraphy with the spirit and practices of modernism.
Boullata studied Islamic art in Morocco in the 1990s, and in 2001 he began research into the origins of contemporary art in Palestine.
...