Osman Waqialla

Born Rufa'a, Sudan, 1925

Waqialla graduated from the Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum, Sudan, 1945, the School of Design, Khartoum, 1946, and, having received a scholarship, from Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London, 1949. He later travelled to Egypt where he trained as a calligrapher under the master Sayyid Muhammed Ibrahim (d. 1994) at the School of Arabic Calligraphy, Cairo. He taught at the College of Fine and Applied Arts in Khartoum, 1949–54, and in 1954 founded Studio Osman, a meeting place for artists and intellectuals in Sudan until 1964. He received several commissions, including calligraphic designs for the first Sudanese currency, and is considered one of the first artists of the modern art movement in Sudan to have explored calligraphy. He moved to England in 1967 and wrote poetry and articles on art and culture. He also worked for the BBC and as a consultant calligrapher to Thomas de la Rue, the firm of banknote makers, from 1969 to 1979. His work has been exhibited in Africa, the Middle East, the USA and Europe, including the touring exhibition Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa, which began at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1995. His works are in both private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution,Washington, DC.