Introverted Lyricism

By Robert Clark, *Exhibition preview: Nasreen Mohamedi, Milton Keynes* - The Guardian - London, UK
Saturday, September 19, 2009

Nasreen Mohamedi was a major, late-20th-century Indian artist who remains surprisingly under-recognised in the west.

Hers is unique stuff, a wonderful stylistic hybrid of influences from modernism (the wandering graphic fancies of Paul Klee, Kasimir Malevich's angulated abstractions) and eastern traditions (the introverted lyricism of Sufi, the patterned seductions of Islamic design).

Her photographs are architectural studies in which urban details are afforded an almost mystic aura. But it is with her drawings and jotted diaries that Mohamedi particularly enchants the eye and the mind.

Some are painstakingly geometric, like studies for some futuristic temple. Others are calligraphic improvisations, the doodles of a wayward imagination.

• Milton Keynes Gallery, to 15 Nov