Ali Hassan was born in Doha, Qatar in 1956. He has a BA from Qatar University in history, but his long involvement with Arabic calligraphy began in 1972 with work as a calligrapher for several local newspapers.
Pursuing his interest in calligraphy, Hassan attended a workshop by the Arabic & Islamic Restoration Legacy at the University of Lovan, Belgium in 1984 and, subsequently, graphic arts courses in Cairo in 1986.
A year later, Hassan held his first exhibition at the Sheraton Hotel in Doha and thus began his career in contemporary Arab art. Today he has exhibited extensively internationally, including a solo exhibition in
Tokyo and group shows in Zurich, Paris and New York. He is Chairman of the Doha organisations, the Youth Creative Art Centre and the Girl’s Creativity Art Centre. Hassan’s earliest works were black-and-white Arabic calligraphic lithographs on paper, mainly showing surahs from the Qur’an, Arabic poetry, and passages from the book “1001 Arabian Nights”. He then began to add hue to his black-and-white works, using watercolour, which in turn led him to the next, celebrated phase in his artistic development, explorations of the Arabic letter ‘noon’.
