Artist and scholar, born in Alexandria, Egypt, a leading authority on Arabic art and design. He graduated in fine arts with distinction from the University of Alexandria, 1966, remaining as a lecturer in painting and stage design until 1973. In 1974 he gained a scholarship to pursue advanced printmaking, gaining his master’s with distinction in 1978 from Central School in London, where he lectured in Arabic calligraphy, 1980–2. In 1989 he gained his doctorate from the Council for National Academic Awards for work on the scientific foundation of Arabic letter shapes, at the Central School in collaboration with the British Museum. Dr Moustafa directed the Fe-Noon Ahmed Moustafa – Research Centre for Arab Art and Design, which he established in 1983.
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He lectured in many parts of the world and was latterly a visiting professor at the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture and the Universities of Westminster and Alexandria. Dr Moustafa was initially trained as a figurative artist in the European tradition. Through rediscovering his Islamic roots, his work became almost exclusively devoted to abstract compositions inspired by texts from the Koran. He created striking images by fusing classic European painting techniques and the exacting discipline of Islamic calligraphy. In 1997 Queen Elizabeth presented a specially commissioned composition by Moustafa, Where the Two Oceans Meet, as a gift to Pakistan on its fiftieth anniversary. In 1998, he had an exhibition of his work in the Pontifica Universitas Gregoriana, the first by a Muslim artist in the Vatican, Italy. Moustafa also showed widely throughout the United Kingdom. In 2004 the University of Hertfordshire, St Albans, initiated a Moustafa touring exhibition, accompanied by a full-colour catalogue. The British Museum holds work by the artist, who lived in Blackheath, southeast London.
Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)