Maliheh Afnan

Maliheh Afnan (; March 24, 1935 – January 6, 2016)

Background She was born in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine, to Persian parents. She was the great-granddaughter of Baháʼu'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, although she was not a member of the Baháʼí Community.

Afnan's work has been shown primarily in France and in London. Her first solo show, in a Basel gallery in 1971, was organized by the American artist Mark Tobey. Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the British Museum in London, the Written Art Collection in Germany, the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the BAII Bank Collection in Paris.

Work As a child, Afnan was fascinated by written language and calligraphy. Her own mail came to her home in three languages- Arabic, English, and Hebrew. However, at the time, she couldn’t read or write, and would instead fill pages with invented writing. This trend continued into her present works, where imagined writing and numbers are always present—even in the landscapes. “I love looking at scripts,” she said. “They excite me visually and excite me even further when I can’t read then because then it’s so much more mysterious and they could be so many other things, rather than some banal statement.” Later in life, she pulled more inspiration from Mark Tobey, who worked in the abstract script. He mentored her while she visited Switzerland.

Afnan talked about her work as having layers and enjoyed the idea of the “layers” of life showing themselves in her work. She demonstrated her pieces having the layers of old civilizations, and said her layers of colour are similar to layers of the sun lain over the paper.

She also expressed her love for accidents. Tribute On July 5, 2021, Google celebrated her with a Google Doodle.