Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s traces the emergence and development of abstraction in the Arab World through paintings and sculpture dating from the 1950s through the 1980s. Drawn from the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation based in Sharjah, UAE, this book features nearly 80 works by a diverse group of artists.

Taking Shape explores how 20th-century abstraction developed and played out in the Arab World. Shedding light on a number of abstract movements initiated by artists’ collectives as well as individual practitioners in the region and the Arab diaspora, this book examines how these artists moved away from figuration and naturalistic depictions of reality toward investigations into the expressive capacities of line, color, and texture. Placing the featured artists and their works within larger, cultural, and global contexts, Taking Shape contributes to the bourgeoning scholarship on and interest in art from the region.