68 ART WORKS - A CENTURY OF CONTEMPORARY MIDDLE EASTERN ART

Artists:

Abdul Kadir Al Rassam, Akram Shukri, Faeq Hassan, Ghazi Saudi, Jewad Selim, Kadhim Hayder, Khaled Al-Jadir, Lorna Selim, Mohammed "Hajji" Selim, Saleh Al-Jumaie, Zaid Salih, Jamil Hamoudi, Ismael Fattah, Dia Azzawi, Rafa Nasiri, Mohammad Mohreddin, Ismael Fattah, Yasin Atia, Iman Ali Khalid, Kahlil Gibran, Shafic Abboud, Louay Kayyali, Salah Abdel Kerim, Reza Derakshani, Sohrab Sepehri, Massoud Arabshahi, Nasser Ovissi, Ahmed Moustafa, Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar, Hussein Fawzi, Farhad Moshiri, Mohammad Ehsai, Farideh Lashai, Khadiga Riad, Inji Efflatoun, Hussein Bicar, Tahia Halim, Salah Taher, Seif Wanly, Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, Nasrollah Afjei, Azra Aghighi Bakhsayeshi, Ali Shirazi, Nja Mahdaoui, Tahia Halim, Adel El Siwi, Tarek Al-Ghoussein, Hassan Hajjaj, Ali Omar Ermes, Hosni Banani, Georges Hanna Sabbagh, George Bahgory, Mohammad Ehsai, Mahmoud Abdel-Mawgood, Bahram Hanafi, 

Abdul Kadir Al Rassam (Iraq, 1882-1952)

View of Ashra, c. 1930

oil on canvas, framed

61 x 90cm (24 x 35 7/16in)

Private collection

Abdul Kadir Al Rassam was a member of the first generation of modern Iraqi painters. He was the pioneer among a group of predominantly amateur artists trained in Istanbul who brought their artistic knowledge back to their home country. This group of "soldier-artists" are widely credited with introducing canvas painting to Iraq at the turn of the century. Working in a realist style, al-Rassam is known for his sweeping landscapes, immaculate portraits, and faithful portrayals of everyday life in Iraq. He is one of the most prominent and prolific painters in Iraq's modern art history and his work heavily influenced the generations that followed. More on Abdul Kadir Al Rassam

Mohammed "Hajji" Selim (Iraq, 1883-1941)

Still Life, c. 1941

Oil on canvas

56 x 95cm (22 1/16 x 37 3/8in).

Private collection

The present work is one of the most well-known examples of early Iraqi modernism painted by Mohammed "Hajji" Selim, father of prominent Iraqi painter Jewad Selim. 

Mohammed Selim was born in Baghdad. His parents were both originally from Mosel in the North of Iraq. Like many individuals from well to do families in Iraq, Selim was educated at the military academy in Istanbul where students encountered Turkish artistic styles of calligraphy and miniature and landscape painting. During the Ottoman reign Selim became an officer in the Ottoman army as well as an amateur artist. More on Mohammed Selim

Akram Shukri (Iraq, 1910-1986)

Abstract Composition, c. 1962

Oil on wood, framed

65 x 48cm (25 9/16 x 18 7/8in).

Private collection

Akram Shukri is considered one of the most important artists in the development of the Iraqi modern art movement, and although primarily an architect he was the founding member of the Society of Artists and Art Lovers in 1941. This group included important Iraqi artists such as Jawad Selim, Hafiz Droubi and Faik Hassan. Numerous members of this society went on to found other important artist groups; Faik Hassan was the leader of La Societe Primitive which later became known as The Pioneers, and Hafiz Droubi formed a group known as The Baghdad Group of Modern Art. More on Akram Shukri

Akram Shukri (Iraq, 1910-1986)

Untitled, circa 1950's

Oil on board

56 x 46cm (22 1/16 x 18 1/8in).

Private collection

Zaid Salih (Iraq)

Landscape, c. 1930

Oil on board

45 x 40cm (17 11/16 x 15 3/4in)

Private collection

1922 Artist Zaid Saleh Zaki was born in Iraq in a house that professes art and architecture. His father was veteran visual artist, Mohamed Saleh Zaki. He studied at Al-Mamuniya Elementary School, where he met the artist Jewad Selim and Issa Hanna. They had a friendly relationship that established artistic and cultural dialogues in the future. His hobby for painting began during that time and in the fifth grade.His father was a friend of great artists such as the great artist Abdulqader Al-Rassam, Jewad’s father Al-Hajj Muhammad Selim Ali Al-Mousli and Asem Hafudh, where he grew up in these artistic atmospheres in addition to the early knowledge of the international experiences that he was provided through the books and technical magazines that were circulating at the time.As his father was a military man, and frequently moved between the cities of Iraq, he completed middle school in the city of Kirkuk.1940 He enrolled in the military school in Baghdad, graduated as an officer and worked in the military corps. He continued practicing art.1947 He traveled to England to study and saw most of the art and historical museums there that enriched his culture and developed his artistic experience.1950 He joined the Primitivist Group after his return to Baghdad and became an active member in it. At this stage, he became interested in drawing in the realist style and produced many realist works that won the admiration of his colleagues in the group for their mastery and aesthetics.During the active period of La Société Primitive”, which later became known as the ‘Pioneers Group’, he participated in all its activities and exhibited his works in most of its exhibitions.1951 He participated in the English Exhibition at the British Council.1956 He participated in the British Cultural Institute exhibition, in which he exhibited four works.He joined the Iraqi Visual Artists Association and participated in most of its exhibitions.1957 He participated in the Iraqi Contemporary Art Exhibition at the UNESCO Hall in Beirut, in which he exhibited one work.Like Faik Hassan and some of the visual artists, he tried several techniques in his art, including the fauvist, impressionist and the realist style with his friends in the Pioneers Group, Faik Hasan, Ismail Al-Cheikhli, Dr.Khaled Al-Qassab and others.1986 The artist passed away at the age of sixty-four years. More on Zaid Saleh Zaki

Jewad Selim (Iraq, 1919-1961)

Lamea, c. 1949

Oil on canvas, framed

61 x 46cm (24 x 18 1/8in).

Private collection

Depicting the prominent Iraqi poetess Lamea Abbas Amara, the painting, executed in 1949, is one with which Jewad had a well-documented personal connection, and it remained in the artist's collection until his passing, taking part in the landmark "Societe Primitive" exhibition at the Baghdad Fine Arts institute in 1952, where it was photographed alongside Selim and his wife Lorna.

After Jewad's death in 1961 "Lamea" remained with Lorna Selim till 1971, when it was sold into the equally esteemed collection of Iraq's preeminent art critic Jabra Ibrahim Jabra before passing to his family from which it was purchased by the present owner. More on this painting

Jewad Selim (1919–1961) was an Iraqi painter and sculptor born in Ankara (Turkey) in 1919. He studied sculpture in Paris (1938-1939), Rome (1939-1940) and London (1946-1948). Having been influenced by Western artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore, Selim returned to Iraq and was appointed head of the Sculpture Department at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, a position he retained until his death in 1961. He also founded the Jama'et Baghdad lil Fen al-Hadith (The Baghdad Modern Art Group) with fellow artist Shakir Hassan Al Said, as well as the new Baghdad School of Modern Art. He is especially known for his Nasb al-Hurriyah (Monument of Freedom), located in one of Baghdad's main squares. In this monument, the artist celebrated the Iraqi people and the 1958 Revolution, however, he died before the monument was finished. Selim is credited as being the most influential artist in Iraq's modern art movement. More on Jewad Selim 

Lorna Selim (Iraq, born 1928)

Secondary School Street, Baghdad, c. 1977

Ink on paper, framed

27 x 80cm (10 5/8 x 31 1/2in).

Private collection

Lorna Selim received a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Arts, London, where she received a diploma in painting and design in 1948. The following year she received an Art Teachers' Diploma (ATD) from the London University Institute of Education. From 1949-50 she taught art at the Tapton House Grammar School, Chesterfield, England. In the UK, she met Jewad Selim and they married in 1950. Returning to Baghdad, Lorna Selim became a member of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, Art Friends Society, and Society of Iraqi Plastic Artists. During the 1950s, she exhibited her work with the Baghdad Modern Art Group and the Pioneers Group. She was an art teacher at Ta'ssisiya School, Baghdad, in 1951, and participated in the Iraqi Pavilion Design for the International Fair held in Damascus in 1954. Along with Mohamed Ghani Hikmet, she supervised the completion of Jewad Selim's Monument of Freedom after his sudden death in 1961. More on Lorna Selim

Faeq Hassan (Iraq, 1914-1992)

Baghdad Alley, c. 1968 

Oil on canvas

76 x 64cm (29 15/16 x 25 3/16in)

Private collection

Faeq Hassan (1914–1992) was an Iraqi painter noted for founding several 20th century art groups, which collectively were responsible for bridging the gap between Iraqi heritage and traditional art and modern art. He is often called the 'father of Iraqi modern art.'

Hassan was born in Baghdad in 1914 His father had died before Hassan was born. As a child, he helped his mother who made folkloric clay statues of Arab Bedouins and local farmers. As a young boy, he visited his uncle who was working as a gardener for King Faisal I where the King saw the boy drawing a horse. Recognising his talent, the King promised to give the young artist a scholarship. However, the King died in 1933 before he could carry out his promise.

During the early 1930s, Hassan gave art lessons at a local school, and when the new King Faisal II visited his school, he ordered that Hassan be sent to Paris to study art, thus fulfilling his father's earlier promise to the young boy. He graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1938. Hassan was one a very small group of artists sent to study abroad. On their return to Iraq, this group became the cornerstone of modern art in Iraq.

On his return to Baghdad, Hassan founded the Painting Department at the Fine Arts Institute in 1939-1940. He also founded the Al-Ruwad (The Pioneers Group), in the 1930s . The group attempted to incorporate local phenomena into art. They rejected the artificial atmosphere of the artist’s studio and encouraged artists to engage with nature and traditional Iraqi life and held their first exhibition in 1931. This group was responsible for taking the first steps towards bridging the gap between modernity and heritage. 

For most of his working life, he was a member of the Iraqi Artists' Society. He died in 1992 from heart failure. More on Faeq Hassan

Ghazi Saudi (Iraq)

Untitled/ 

The city of Ghazi al Saudi , c. 1960

Oil on canvas

77 x 60cm (30 5/16 x 23 5/8in).

Private collection

• "The city of Ghazi al Saudi , today's Baghdad, is the actual place implanted in a time that goes back some eight hundred years. Al Wasiti's illustrations of Maqamat al Hariri have been a constant inspiration for him, not only in his smaller canvases and ceramics, but also in his large frescoes, where he employs the old Arab gold, blue and red with black outlines in the representation of cit-scapes translated into a modern idiom" More on The city of Ghazi al Saudi

Ghazi Saudi born in Baghdad in 1935, and studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1953. Later, he trained in Rome specialising in murals and frescoes and returned to Baghdad in the early-mid 1960s where he joined the faculty at the same Institute. In 1965, he held his first solo exhibition after returning from Italy. The exhibition was at Al-Wasiti Gallery in Baghdad; a private gallery space founded by pioneer Iraqi architects Mohamed Makiya and Saeed Ali Mathloum.

He is best known for several remarkable murals in Baghdad, such as the notable entrance of Az-Zawraa’ Park and the Baghdadi Museum. Al-Saudi murals have a distinctive style informed by the Iraqi modern art movement of the 1950s yet stand out stylistically and technically as unique examples of public art. More on Ghazi Saudi

Khaled Al-Jadir (Iraq, 1922-1988)

Untitled (Baghdad), c. 1940

Oil on canvas

50 x 40cm (19 11/16 x 15 3/4in)

Private collection

"He was truly, incontestably the precursor of contemporary expressionist art in Iraq" - Shakir Hassan Al Said

"Khaled Al-Jadir's canvases opt for a naturalism oblivious of current idioms. His themes are people in the street, in the alley, in the market, in the village. They are the poor men and women of daily life with their many children, ungainly

to look at but alive and vigorous. More on this painting

Khaled Al Jader was an Iraqi artist born in Baghdad in 1922. After attending the Middle Eastern School in Baghdad, he studied at the College of Law and Art at the Institute of Fine Art concurrently, where he graduated with art and law degrees in 1946. He then obtained a position teaching painting at the Adhamiya High School. In 1954, he traveled to Paris on a scholarship to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1954 and earned a Ph.D. in the History of Islamic Art from the Sorbonne. There, Al Jader developed a significant interest in the Impressionists and joined the Salon de Paris. Al Jader accepted the position of Dean of the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, which he held for several years. He founded the Academy of Fine Arts of Baghdad University in 1962, along with his colleagues Dr. Aziz Shalal Aziz and Dr. As'ad Abdul Razak, and later became its Dean. He spent a few years in Berlin in the 1960s and moved to Saudi Arabia in the 1970s to study at Riyadh University. In the early 1980s, Al Jader then traveled to Morocco in the 1970s to work as a teacher at the Higher Institute of Journalism. He also was chair of the National Committee for Plastic Art with UNESCO.

Al Jader was very active in the modern Iraqi art movement and major art groups such as the Pioneers Group, the Impressionists group, and the Society of Iraqi Plastic Artists and headed the Society of Iraqi artists for a while. Al Jader mastered realistic-expressionism with his landscapes and everyday scenes of life but has been titled "pioneer of abstract art" owing to his free and uninhibited use of brushstrokes. His work throughout the years of experimentation served as an essential advancement in Modern Iraqi art.

He passed away in 1988 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. More on Khaled Al Jader

Faraj Abou (Iraq, born 1921)

Untitled 

Oil on wood

35 x 32cm (13 3/4 x 12 5/8in)

Private collection

Faraj Abou was born in 1921 and was largely inspired creatively by the 1950s. In the Post-War period the lens of modernism was focused, in terms of internationally, on developments in New York City. The Second World War had brought many prominent creatives to the city in exile from Europe, leading to a noteworthy pooling of talent and ideas. Influential Europeans that came to New York and provided inspiration for American artists included Piet Mondrian, Josef Albers and Hans Hoffmann, who between them set the basis of much of the United States’ significant cultural growth in the subsequent decades. Influential artists of the Abstract Expressionist Generation included Jackson Pollock (who innovated his famed drip, splatter and pour painting techniques), Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Frank Kline, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still and Adolph Gottlieb. It was a male dominated environment, but necessary revisionism of this period has highlighted the contributions of female artists such as Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and Louise Bourgeois, amongst others. More on Faraj Abou

Faik Hussain (1944-2003)

Untitled, c. 1963

Gouache on paper, framed

22 x 28cm (8 11/16 x 11in)

Private collection

While Faiq Hassan’s painting style was influenced by his studies in Europe, he was dedicated to celebrating Iraqi national pride and worked towards developing a local visual language. His cubist works such as Bedouin Tent relay narratives of daily life from the Iraqi peasants living along the Tigris and Euphrates. In this work, two figures are in a tent and surrounded by objects, including the traditional dallah and finjan (coffee pot and cups). The work, rendered in a fragmented fashion is multifaceted, allowing for various viewpoints into the intimate scene. Hassan graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1938 after receiving a government scholarship. He returned to Baghdad upon completion of his studies and founded the Department of Painting at the Institute of Fine Arts. In 1940, he started the artist group Société Primitive, which in 1959, was renamed the Pioneers Group and in 1967, he founded the Zawiya art group. Hassan has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in Baghdad and in 1965 was part of the Iraqi Art group show in Beirut. He was awarded the Golden Prize of the Gulbenkian Foundation in Iraq. His work is in numerous public collections, including Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha; and the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in Amman. More on Faik Hussain

Shakir Hassan Al Said (Iraq, 1925-2004)

Figure in Profile, c. 1951

Watercolor on paper

40 x 29cm (15 3/4 x 11 7/16in).

Private collection

Executed between 1951 and 1952, the following works, although modest in scale, are enormous in magnitude. They were drawn during the foundational year of the Baghdad Group, and are perhaps some of the earliest remnants of the movement's formative period. 

Exhibited in the house of Shaker Hassan Al Said, works such as the Figure in Profile, which was later published and included in his retrospective exhibition at Athar Gallery in 2001, would have witnessed the first coming together of the illustrious Baghdad Group Artists, their speeches, the formulation of their manifesto's and the very first audiences to be afforded a valuable glimpse at this seminal movements artistic output. More on this painting

Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925–2004), an Iraqi painter, sculptor and writer, is considered one of Iraq's most innovative and influential artists.

Born in Samawa, Al Said lived, worked and died in Bagdad. In 1948 he received  a degree in social science from the Higher Institute of Teachers in Baghdad and in 1954 a diploma in painting from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad. He continued his studies at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris until 1959. During his stay in Paris, he discovered Western modern art in galleries and Sumerian art at the Louvre. He returned to Baghdad in 1959.

He co-founded in 1951 with Jawad Saleem Jama'et Baghdad lil Fann al-Hadith (Baghdad Modern Art Group), one of the most unusual arts movements in the Middle East in the post–World War II, itwas called Istilham al-turath (Seeking inspiration from tradition), considered as "the basic point of departure, to achieve through modern styles, a cultural vision". He headed the group after the death of Saleem in 1961.

In 1971, he founded Al Bu'd al Wahad (the One-dimension Group)", which promoted the modern calligraphic school in Arab art.

His work is collected by major museums, such as Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, the Guggenheim in New York, and Sharjah Art Museum. More on Shakir Hassan Al Said 

Lorna Selim (Iraq, born 1928)

Three Works on Board, c. 2000

Oil on board, framed

Tryptic; From Left to Right: 24x30cm, cm 23x31, cm23x28

Private collection

Lorna Selim received a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Arts, London, where she received a diploma in painting and design in 1948. The following year she received an Art Teachers' Diploma (ATD) from the London University Institute of Education. From 1949–50 she taught art at the Tapton House Grammar School, Chesterfield, England. In the UK, she met Jewad Selim and they married in 1950. Returning to Baghdad, Lorna Selim became a member of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, Art Friends Society, and Society of Iraqi Plastic Artists. During the 1950s, she exhibited her work with the Baghdad Modern Art Group and the Pioneers Group. She was an art teacher at Ta'ssisiya School, Baghdad, in 1951, and participated in the Iraqi Pavilion Design for the International Fair held in Damascus in 1954. Along with Mohamed Ghani Hikmet, she supervised the completion of Jewad Selim's Monument of Freedom after his sudden death in 1961.

She taught drawing and painting at the Girls College in 1961, and the architecture department of the Engineering College, Baghdad University, in 1965. She lives and works in Abergavenny, Wales. Her work is held in collections including Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha. More on Lorna Selim

Saleh Al-Jumaie (Iraq, born 1939)

Untitled, c. 1968

Oil on canvas, framed

58 x 58cm (22 13/16 x 22 13/16in).

Private collection

"Saleh al Jumaie is very particular about his medium, which is usually a mixture of metal (mostly aluminium) and acrylic, and through it he continues an old concern with the darkness of the soul from the sorrows of tragic love to the horrors of genocide to which the Palestinians have been subjected for thirty years. The artist's roots, however, are in the archaeological sites of ancient Iraqi cultures: but his contemporary awareness feeds these roots and brings about in his work a haunting mixture of the beautiful and the agonized. His non figurative

almost monochromatic structures are very rarely completely abstract, just as his figurative compositions seem to aspire to the condition of the abstract; both are tense, time-laden, and haunting" - Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. More on this painting

Saleh al-Jumai'e (b. 1939 Saweira, Iraq) is an Iraqi artist noted for his works that explore the notion of tracks left by ancient heritage. His works often integrate Arabic calligraphy in an abstract artwork.

Saleh al-Jumai'e was born in 1939 in Saweira, Iraq. He was among the first generation of students to graduate from the new Academy of Fine Arts in 1962. He and his cohort were taught by the first generation of contemporary Iraqi artists including Hafidh al-Droubi and Jawad Saleem, who promoted the idea of integrating ancient heritage within abstract artworks. Before long, the younger artists, including Al-Jumaie rebelled against traditional art styles and wanted to explore the use of new materials and media such as collage, aluminum and mono-type.

In 1965, he was nominated for a Ministry of Education scholarship which allowed him to study at the Californian College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Following his return to Baghdad, he co-founded an artists' group. The Al-Ru’yah al-Jadida ['New Vision Group']. The group represented a free art style where many artists believed that they needed to be true to their own era, and encouraged the idea of freedom of creativity within a framework of heritage.

In 1979, he left Iraq for political reasons, and in 1981 he and his family settled in Almeda, California where he worked as a freelance graphic artist. More on Saleh al-Jumai'e

Salem Al-Dabbagh (Iraq, born 1941)

Untitled, c. 2004

Oil on canvas, framed

90 x 90cm (35 7/16 x 35 7/16in). 

Private collection

Salim al-Dabbagh (born 1941 in Mosul, Iraq) is an Iraqi painter and installation artist noted for abstract work that references Iraqi traditions. He was one of the founders of the Innovationists Group; an artists' collective that helped to shape modern art in Iraq and was the Head of the Graphic Department at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad from 1971 to 2000.

Salim al-Dabbagh was born in Mosul, Iraq in 1941] As a child he observed locals engaged in traditional craft-work, which helped him to develop a love of local tradition and culture. He was fascinated by the women using goat hair to weave tents on the streets and in the squares. He would later use this as a source of inspiration for his artwork.

He obtained a degree in painting from the Baghdad Institute of Fine Arts in 1965. He was then awarded a scholarship by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to undertake a two-year course in graphic arts in Lisbon (1967–68). He began painting in an abstract style as a student of Roman Artymowski, the Polish artist used circular geometric forms. However, al-Dabbagh, who wanted to reference the nomads' tents he had observed as a child, was enchanted by rectangular forms.

He was an active participant in the Iraqi arts community. In 1965, he was one of the founders of the art group known as Al-Mujadidin (The Innovationists). The membership of this group comprised younger members of Iraq's arts scene, and especially those who wanted to experiment with different media and who often chose war and conflict as key themes for their artwork and was one of the more enduring of all Iraq's art groups. The group held its first exhibition in 1965 at the National Gallery of Modern Art where members all exhibited works.

Al-Dabbagh has worked as an art and graphic design professor and served as Head of the Graphic Design Department at Baghdad's Institute of Fine Arts (1971-2000) and has also worked as a consultant to Iraqi fashion houses. He lives and works in Baghdad. More on Salim al-Dabbagh

Kadhim Hayder (Iraq, 1932-1985)

Untitled, c. 1960

Oil on canvas

76 x 100cm (29 15/16 x 39 3/8in).

Private collection

"A elegiac tone has marked the work of Kadhem Haider for some years, ever since he painted a large number of pictures on the martyrdom of Hussein at Karbala, but in a manner quite different from that of Azzawi. For him the religious inspiration of Islam comes through a sense of tragedy, in signs and symbols that he makes his own; horses, helmets, swords, spears, men, women, tents, conspiracies, treacheries - the whole phantasmagoria of ancient battles in a peculiarly personal idiom." Jabra Ibrahim Jabra More on this painting

Kadhim Hayder is among the most revered members of Iraq’s modernist movement and was a member of a number of artists groups. Merging his interests in literature, symbolism and daily life, Hayder articulated multiple levels of readings in his painting practice. He studied painting at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad and later attended the Royal College of Art in London to study theatre design and printmaking from 1961 to 1962. After his return to Iraq and infused with a sense of pan-Arab identity, he introduced a new paradigm to his representational style. He focused on the eighth century Battle of Karbala, which resulted in the death of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein ibn Ali, creating a series of paintings known as Melhamet al-Shahid, or The Martyr’s Epic. An analysis of Hayder’s approach suggests that he re-contextualised the practice of taziya (mourning) through poetry and theatrical re-enactments of the battle. Hayder’s work was exhibited frequently in the 1970s, including at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Baghdad's First Arab Biennial in 1974. More on Kadhim Hayder

Jamil Hamoudi (Iraq, 1924-2003)

Untitled, c. 1959

Acrylic on board, framed

65 x 54cm (25 9/16 x 21 1/4in).

Private collection

"Now calligraphy for the Arab artist was for centuries a major outlet of creativity: he employed it inventively and in endless modulations to express a powerful aesthetic impulse often associated with 'spiritual' feelings, largely because most of the phrases thus written were of a religious nature." Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. More on this painting

Jamil Hamoudi (1924–2003) was an Iraqi artist who became the Director of the Ministry of Culture's Fine Arts Department. He is noted for his involvement in various Iraqi and Arabic art movements including the Hurufiyya movement which bridged the gap between traditional and modern Iraqi art.

Hamoudi started out as a self-taught sculptor in Baghdad. He developed a naturalistic style. In 1944, he was taken on to teach drawing and art history at a school in Baghdad. At the same time he attended classes at the Baghdad College of Fine Arts. He graduated in 1945 and in 1947, took a government scholarship to go to Paris, to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Académie Julian, and École du Louvre. He also Hamoudi researched the Assyrian-Babylonian art and languages.

In 1943, he created what has been described as the first Iraqi sculpture; a figure of the 11th-century philosopher-poet, Al-Maʿarri. By 1947, he was experimenting with abstract paintings using Arabic characters, and as such was one of the early pioneers of hurufiyya art. This led him on a path to discover the graphic possibilities of the letter in art.

Certain art historians regard him as the "founding father" of the hurufiyya movemen.  He defined his use of Arabic script in the context of rediscovering his own heritage, amid his studies of European art. He wanted to cling onto his own values and traditions as a means of avoiding being overtaken by experiences outside his own heritage. He wrote that there was nothing more sacred that the Arabic alphabet, saying that his art was "a form of prayer."

In 1973 he was appointed as Director of Fine Arts at the Ministry of Culture. More on Jamil Hamoudi

Ismael Fattah (Iraq, 1934-2004)

Untitled 

acrylic and mixed media on board

signed in Arabic and dated "XX 01", executed in 2001

153 x 122cm (60 1/4 x 48 1/16in).

"With Ismail Fattah who, like Rahal and Ghani, studied in Rome. His works are related to his country's experience by virtue of their themes rather than their actual style. His beautiful statue of the great Abbasid poet Abu Nuwas may look like a Gothic Christ, but he knows it. He knows his bronzes owe more to modern sculpture than to Sumer or Assyria. To him, this is a technical point which is no cause for worry as long as he can express his Iraqi themes in a manner related to the present. If his style, which has its emphatic qualities, derives from contemporary art, his confidence may lie in the fact that art in our time derives from a vast mixture of cultures mostly medieval or ancient, and especially middle-eastern" - Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. More on this painting

Ismail Fatah Al-Turk ("Ismail Fatah") (1934 or 1938–2004) was an Iraqi painter and sculptor born in Basra, Iraq, noted for his abstract art, monumental sculpture and public works and as part of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, which fostered a sense of national identity. His monument, al-Shaeed is the most iconic public monument in Baghdad.

Al-Turk was born in Basra in 1934. He graduated from the Baghdad Institute of Fine Arts in 1956 with a Bachelor of Painting and in 1958 with a Bachelor of Sculpture, and received a Master's degree in fine art from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma in 1962. While in Rome, he also studied ceramics at San Giacomo

He was very active in Baghdad's arts culture, joining a number of art groups including the Baghdad Modern Art Group (1957) and the al-Zawiya group, both groups were concerned with using art to reassert a sense of national identity by integrating Iraq's artistic heritage with international trends.

Fatah taught sculpture at the Baghdad Institute of Fine Arts and ceramics at the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Baghdad. In 1986, he was the Chairman of the Iraqi Association of Plastic Arts.

Fatah executed a number of murals and sculptures for public display in Baghdad. Many of these pay homage to notable Iraqi poets, both current and historical. He held six exhibitions for sculpture and five exhibitions for paintings in Rome, Baghdad and Beirut. He was the winner of first prize for Arab artists in Italy.

The most well-known of his sculptures is the turquoise blue split dome of the Al-Shaheed Monument (Martyrs' Monument), in Palestine Street, Baghdad. Shaheed consists of a circular platform floating on top of an underground museum, and over which stands a split dome, 40 metres in height. 

While living and working in United Arab Emirates, Fatah contracted cancer. He returned to Baghdad where he died 21 July 2004. More on Ismail Fatah Al-Turk

Dia Azzawi (Iraq, born 1939)

Miramar Garden - Mohammedia, c. 1994 

Oil on canvas

40 x 30cm (15 3/4 x 11 13/16in)

Private collection

"These are the colors of the Bedouins, of the desert. Almost all tribes, from Morocco to the Gulf, share a preference for warm colors - reds, oranges, yellows - in contrast to Europe, where pastels are more common. Such colors stand out against the neutral tones of the desert, and, indeed, Bedouins will often surround a black tent with textiles of vibrant colours, as if replicating a garden" - Dia Azzawi. More on this painting

Born in Baghdad in 1939, Dia Azzawi started his artistic career in 1964, after graduating from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad and completing a degree in archaeology from Baghdad University in 1962.

In 1969, Azzawi (with Rafa Nasiri, Mohammad Muhriddin, Ismail Fattah, Hachem al-Samarchi and Saleh al Jumaie) formed the New Vision group (al-Ru’yya al-Jadidah), uniting fellow artists ideologically and culturally as opposed to stylistically. Through his involvement with the New Vision group Azzawi found inspiration in contemporary subjects and issues, particularly the plight of the Palestinians. He was also briefly a member of Shakir Hassan Al Said’s One Dimension group (Jama’t al-Bu’d al-Wahid).

From 1968 to 1976, Azzawi was the director of the Iraqi Antiquities Department in Baghdad. He has lived in London since 1976, where he served as art advisor to the city’s Iraqi Cultural Centre, from 1977 to 1980. Azzawi’s move to London led him to rediscover book art (dafatir), an art form that he has encouraged other artists from Iraq and the region to explore.

With exhibitions of his work have been held in international, private and public collections including the Museums of Modern Art in Baghdad, Damascus and Tunis; Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; Kinda Foundation, Saudi Arabia; Una Foundation, Casablanca; Arab Monetary Fund, Abu Dhabi; Development Fund, Kuwait; Jeddah International Airport; British Museum, Tate Modern, and Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Institut du Monde Arabe, Bibliothèque Nationale de France and Colas Foundation, Paris; Harba Collection, Iraq and Italy; Gulbenkian Collection, Barcelona; and Library of Congress and the World Bank, Washington, DC. More on Dia Azzawi

Dia Azzawi (Iraq, born 1939)

Susbiro del Moro/ Sigh of the Moor, c. 2010

Bronze

49 x 86cm x 14cm (19 5/16 x 33 7/8in x 5 1/2in)

Private collection

Rafa Nasiri (Iraq, 1940-2013)

Untitled, c. 2004

Oil and gold-leaf on board

120 x 120cm (47 1/4 x 47 1/4in).

Private collection

"There is a deadly darkness at the moment. Perhaps art can bring light into this darkness. As artists, we only have one means to offer resistance in this tragedy, and that is our creativity. Even if we are surrounded by death and horror, we can put these experiences into our art, and try to find an expression for the suffering. Using art to help strengthen the Iraqi identity, to give our best, to stay on the international level that is the only true resistance for me." - Rafa Nasiri. More on this painting

Rafa Nasiri was a renowned contemporary Iraqi painter, known for his compositions (described by critics as "cosmicscapes") drawing cues from modern abstract art as well as using Chinese influences and Arabic calligraphy within his art.

Rafa studied painting in Iraq, Graphic art in China and in Portugal. Between 1974 and 2001 he joined several professional Graphic studios in Salzburg, London, Assela, Baghdad and Amman.

He taught painting, graphic art and graphic design in Iraq, Jordan & Bahrain from 1964 to 2003 in addition to delivering many lectures on art in different Arab and world capitals. In 1997 he published a book entitled "Contemporary Graphic Art ".

Rafa has held a large number of individual exhibitions from 1963 to the present time.

International prizes include Fredrickstad (Norway) 1978, Cagnes-sur-mer (France) 1977, Salzburg (Austria) 1974, and Baghdad (Iraq) 1986. Rafa took part as Jury member for international exhibitions in London 1980, Berlin 1987, Paris 1982, Fredrickstad 1995, and Cairo 1997. More on Rafa Nasiri

Mohammad Mohreddin (Iraq, born 1938)

Untitled, c. 1998

Oil on canvas

70 x 70cm (27 9/16 x 27 9/16in)

Private collection

"His mainly abstract compositions, done in very dark colours and often in wooden collage riddled with bullet-holes and traced in lines suggesting human heads, are disturbing reminders of what he calls "this strange world." However much it betrays
the Polish influences he has carried with him ever since he studied in Warsaw, his work is charged with a somberness of statement and evocation that gives it its consistency. With their forceful stark idiom, his large paintings are never easy to forget." - Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. More on this painting

Mohammad Mohreddin was born in Basra, Iraq in 1938. Works and lives in Iraq. He obtained his diploma in Graphics and Painting from Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland.

Mohraddin paints a reality where a paradox reigns. Like a blackboard that hasn't been well rubbed his work is full of half seen mathematical formulas and theories, of tiny calligraphy, incomplete messages, imprints of hands and hazy drawings that look like the negatives of an old and forgotten film. More on Mohammad Mohreddin

Ismael Fattah (Iraq, 1934-2004)

Face, c. 2003

Acrylic on paper

65 x 52cm (25 9/16 x 20 1/2in).

Private collection

Ismael Fattah, see above

Yasin Atia (Iraq)

Untitled, c. 1997

Oil on canvas

196 x 99cm (77 3/16 x 39in)

Private collection

I have no biography for YASIN ATIA

Iman Ali Khalid (Iraq)

Untitled, c. 1989 

Oil on canvas

100 x 120cm (39 3/8 x 47 1/4in)

Private collection

Iman Ali Khaled, born 1962 in Baghdad (Iraq) was educated from 1979-1984 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad in the tradition of the radical modernism of her Jewaad Seleem (1919-1961). After her studies she, as a Kurdish painter, chose to stay out of the group of artists that, receiving privileges from the Regime – were working as officially ‘independant’ artists but unless producing art works which the Regime required from them to glorify his oppressive regime. During these eight years she worked as a free painter and as a theatrical costume designer for Iraq Fashion House. Later after the Iraq Wars and the continuing aggression ‘Killing Fields ‘ of the Regime in Kurdistan, Iman Ali Khaled, like most artists from Kurdistan, fled to Europe and settled down in Amsterdam.

In the Netherlands now Iman Ali Khaled was able – due to her transverse thinking – to live her urge for freedom and modernity that was lacked in cultural, religious and private life in Iraq. Her paintings are a mix of arabesque and contemporary Western art movements, powerful reflections like ‘ Silent Thunders ‘ of her Iraqi-Kurdish past as well as dream images that actually represent her free Western life in the Netherlands: “The difference between my autonomous work of then and now, is that I now have more research and more experiment in making a colourful and powerful imagery. Subjects such as freedom were then in Iraq in contrast to here a taboo and dangerous. That has made me stronger as a person and as an artist in my work. Often I paint with my hands as digging in the sand of my past to make new sculptures on canvas of my free present life.” More on Iman Ali Khaled

Kahlil Gibran (American, 1883-1931)

Head of a child

Pencil and watercolour 

19 x 28cm (7 1/2 x 11in)

Private collection

"Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.

But you are life and you are the veil

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror

But you are eternity and you are the mirror" 

Kahlil Gibrain  More

Gibran Khalil Gibran (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931), was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, also considered a philosopher although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages. More on Gibran Khalil Gibran 

Shafic Abboud (Lebanon, 1926-2004)

Untitled 

oil on canvas, framed

signed and dated (on the verso), executed in 1959

70 x 50cm (27 9/16 x 19 11/16in).

Private collection

"The most difficult part for people to accept is that painting is not a reflection on an object, but something which has been lived, a making. We are involved on the first day that we traced a line and laid down a colour on a surface, and the painter's questioning revolves around these facts. It is from there, that the vanity of believing in a random intervention in the artist's sphere of theories suggested by the outside world, comes from." - Shafic Abboud. More on this painting

Shafic Abboud (1926 in Mhaidseh, near Bikfaya, Lebanon – 2004 in Paris, France) was a Lebanese painter. He studied at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts ALBA and left to Paris in 1947] Although he spent most of his life in France, he is considered as one of the most influential Lebanese artists of the 20th century.

When Shafic Abboud arrived in Paris, he was immersed in the modernist and abstract tendencies of painting prevailing in the mid 20th century. He worked in the ateliers of Jean Metzinger, Othon Friesz, Fernand Léger and André Lhote before pursuing his studies at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. These encounters led him to move from a Lebanese tradition of figurative and landscape painting to a colorful personal abstraction.

Abboud remained attached to his oriental roots, remembering oral storytelling from his grandmother as well as Byzantine icons in churches that would eventually radiate in his works. Apart from painting, Abboud showed interest in other medias including ceramics, terracotta, carpets and lithography. He illustrated writing by poems such as Adonis and produce important artist's books. More on Shafic Abboud

Louay Kayyali (Syria, 1934-1978)

Portrait of a Lady, c. 1962

Oil on canvas

95 x 66cm (37 3/8 x 26in)

Private collection

One of the most sought-after Arab artists of the Modernist era, the late Syrian painter Louayy Kayyali's works have come to represent a crucial era in Middle Eastern art's shift into portraiture and figurative representation during the 1960s and 1970s. Kayyali's iconic late career works, executed in the dark years before his mysterious death in a 1978 house fire, are frequently seen. More

Louay Kayyali (Syria, 1934-1978)

Portrait of a Boy, c. 1962 

Oil on canvas

95 x 46cm (37 3/8 x 18 1/8in)

Private collection

Louay Kayali (20 January 1934 – 26 January 1978) was a Syrian modern artist.

Kayali was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1934 and studied art in the Accademia di Belle Arti after having studied at the Al-Tajhiz School where his work was first exhibited in 1952. He met Syrian artist Wahbi al-Hariri there and the two would share a friendship for the rest of Kayali's life. Al-Hariri would become his mentor as he was for artist Fateh Moudarres that Hariri introduced to Kayali in 1955. Moudarress and Kayali would together represent Syrian modern art at the Venice Biennial Fair. He suffered from depression and died in 1978 from burns incurred from his bed catching fire, reportedly from a cigarette. More on Louay Kayali 

Salah Abdel Kerim (Egypt, 1925-1988)

Clara, c. 1957

Oil on canvas

100 x 75cm (39 3/8 x 29 1/2in).

Private collection

Salah Abdel Kerim: (1925-1988). Born in Fayoum to a big family of 5 brothers and sisters. In 1938 he meets the famous painter Hussein Bikar and he becomes his student in the Faculty of Arts in Qena. He remained much attached to his professor all through his life. In 1940 he meets Hussein Youssef Amin and the Group of Contemporary Egyptian Art at the secondary school of Farouk First in Abasseya district in Cairo.

He was then introduced to surrealism for the first time. In 1943 he becomes a student at the Faculty of Fine Arts and graduates with excellence and honors in 1947. In 1948 he becomes an assistant to the interior decoration section at the Faculty of Fine Art. He is then sent to a mission in Paris in 1952 and he becomes a student to Paul Colin and A.Marie Cassandre for publicity and theatre design. He then moves to Rome in 1956 to study design for cinema.

In 1957 he received the international prize in painting from San Vito Romano, Italy and obtains his PHD from Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.Back to Egypt in 1958 he is appointed professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts where he started experimenting with his masterpieces sculptures in wrought iron. In 1959 he receives the first prize for sculpture at the Biennale of Alexandria. At the same year he receives from the Biennale of Saint Paolo, Brazil an honorary merit for his sculpture ‘The Fish’.

In 1960 he receives the award of the Guggenheim National section for his painting ‘Fighting Roosters’. In 1961, Rene Huyghe included his sculpture ‘Cry of the Beast’ in his book ‘Art and Man’ together with the great P.Picasso and Muller under the title of ‘The energy of Form’. In 1963, he receives for the same sculpture an honorary merit from the 7th Biennale of San Paolo. More on Salah Abdel Kerim

Reza Derakshani (Iran, born 1952)

A Taste of Time, c. 2007

Acrylic on canvas

120 x 230cm (47 1/4 x 90 9/16in)

Private collection

This beautiful painting is a classic example of the multi-talented and globally celebrated artist, poet, musician and writer Reza Derakshani's complex and spiritually-inclined practise. A dramatic composition, this single canvas invokes Derakshani's fondness for symbolic iconography including trees, leaves, earth and the animal world. Derakshani's delicate use of gold leaf and spindly, expressionist lines of paint delineate a mythic beast that dominates the canvas with its hulking, dark mass. More on this painting

Reza Derakshani is painter, poet, musician and performance artist, born in Sangsar, Iran in 1952. He graduated from the University of Tehran in 1976 and pursued his studies at the Pasadena School of Art in California. He now lives and works between Dubai, UAE and Austin, USA.

After experimenting with pure abstraction at the beginning of his artistic career in the 1980's whilst being associated with the Neo-expressionists, Derakshani devised his personal artistic style blending abstract and figurative elements from both Western and Eastern cultures, thereby creating an idiosyncratic oeuvre at the confluence of civilizations. In his work, the artist explores the natural world, as well as emotional states and themes of exile and alienation. He builds up the luminous, textured surfaces of his paintings with a base of roof tar, after which he applies layers of color and other materials such as gold, silver, enamel, and sand.

His work features in many public art collections including The British Museum, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art; The Russian Museum in St Petersburg, Russia and the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Germany. In 2016, Derakshani has had two major solo exhibitions at The State Russian Museum in St Petersburg, Russia and at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Germany. More on Reza Derakshani

Sohrab Sepehri (Iran, 1928-1980)

Untitled (Abstract Flora and Fauna), c. 1975

Oil on canvas

100 x 100cm

Private collection

In its grace, naturalism, and sophistication, it is a work utterly faithful to the tenets of Sepehri's oeuvre; demonstrating an almost perfect confluence of Sepehri's strong representational impulse propelled by his love of the vernacular of Kashan and the more opaque abstraction inherited from the Eastern painting traditions he was so fluently versed in. More on this painting

Sohrab Sepehri (October 7, 1928 – April 21, 1980) was a notable Iranian poet and a painter. He was born in Kashan, Iran. He is considered to be one of the five most famous Iranian poets who have practiced modern poetry. 

Sepehri was also one of Iran's foremost modernist painters.

Well-versed in Buddhism, mysticism and Western traditions, he mingled the Western concepts with Eastern ones, thereby creating a kind of poetry unsurpassed in the history of Persian literature. To him, new forms were new means to express his thoughts and feelings.

His poetry has been translated into many languages including English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish, Arabic, Turkish and Russian. An English translation of his selected poems by Ali Salami appeared in 2003.

Sepehri died in Pars hospital in Tehran of leukemia. His poetry is full of humanity and concern for human values. He loved nature and refers to it frequently. More on Sohrab Sepehri

Massoud Arabshahi (Iran, born 1935)

Untitled, c. 1975 

Oil on canvas

88 x 115cm (34 5/8 x 45 1/4in)

Private collection

Massoud Arabshahi was born in Tehran, Iran in 1935, and died there in Sept 16, 2019. He was an Iranian painter.

Arabshahi held his first solo exhibition at the Iran-India Centre, Tehran, in 1964, four years before graduating from the College of Decorative Arts, Tehran. His work includes oils on canvas, sculptures and architectural reliefs- among the latter commissions for the Office for Industry and Mining, Tehran, 1971, and the California Insurance Building, Santa Rosa, California, USA, 1985.

His sources of inspiration comprise Achaemenid and Assyrian art as well as Babylonian carvings and inscriptions. Combining tradition and modernity. His work has been shown in a number of solo and group exhibitions in Iran, Europe and the United States including Two Modernist Iranian Pioneers, at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, 2001; and Iranian Contemporary Art, Barbican Centre, London, 2001. He used to work in Tehran and California. More on Massoud Arabshahi

Nasser Ovissi (Iran, born 1934)

Nude Woman and Horse, c. 1975 

Oil on canvas

92 x 129cm (36 1/4 x 50 13/16in). More

Private collection

Nasser Ovissi is an American-Iranian painter whose work is characterized by stylized figures of Arabic women and horses. Set amidst geometric patterns and decorative elements, his figures seem to merge into and out of the space behind them. “My work is dedicated to the beauty of life and I hope those who experience my work will walk away with an experience of beauty.” Born in Tehran, Iran in 1934, Ovissi studied Law and Political Sciences at the University of Tehran before studying fine art at Beaux Fine Art in Rome. The artist has achieved numerous awards and honors, including being exhibited at the 1959 Paris Biennial and a Grand Prize at the 1962 Biennale of Fine Arts of Tehran. Ovissi lives and works in Reston, VA. His works are included in the collections of the Contemporary Art Museum in Madrid and the National Art Gallery of Greece in Athens. More on Nasser Ovissi

Ahmed Moustafa (Egyptian, born 1943)

Still Life, c. 1972

Oil on canvas

110 x 90cm (43 5/16 x 35 7/16in)

Private collection

Executed in 1972, the present painting is a rare example of Dr Ahmed Moustafa's early work, demonstrating a highly refined and exceptionally modern take on the still-life genre. More on this painting

Ahmed Moustafa, (Egyptian, b. 1943) was born in Alexandria, Egypt Moustafa studied Fine Arts at Alexandria University, after which he obtained an MA and PhD from the Central School of Art and Design in London, where he still lives and works. Moustafa is a practicing calligrapher and scholar who transforms sacred Qur'anic texts into works of art, combining their religious significance with a modern interpretation of the traditional script. 

Employing repetition and other painterly techniques such as incorporating the text into a representational image, Moustafa has been able to lend calligraphy to a more universal reception. Moustafa is known for incorporating a bold color palette into his work as well as his fluid and spontaneous penmanship. The artist engages with a wide range of media such as paintings, tapestries, silk-screen prints and stained glass. His work is held in many private and public collections, such as the National Museums in both Britain and Egypt, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the National Museum of Scotland. More on Ahmed Moustafa

Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar (Egypt, 1925-1965)

Portrait of a Girl, c. 1960

Pastel on paper

34 x 25cm (13 3/8 x 9 13/16in)

Private collection

El Gazzar mixed with the inhabitants of his area. He closely watched the behavior and beliefs of the dervishes, professional magicians and charlatans. He also mixed with their followers who found solace in this milieu redolent of burning incense, the blood of sacrificial animals and the murmering of prayers.

He listened to myths and tales passed on from generation to generation. He was deeply attracted to myths and their legendary heroes and knew the symbols which were nearer to the world of the absurd than to real life. He attended boisterous festivities at which votive offerings, ritual circumcising and embodied illusions were prominent features. He brought for this depth into his paintings, displaying a blend of spiritual and scientific elements. More on El Gazzar

Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar (Egypt, 1925-1965)

Untitled (From the Scientific Progress Series), c. 1964

India ink on paper

36 x 27cm (14 3/16 x 10 5/8in)

Private collection

Abdel Hadi Al Gazzar (1925–1966) was an Egyptian painter. He occupies a unique position among the artists of his generation. His membership in the Contemporary Art Group elevated his status as an artist through his utilization of social commentary in addition to the group's focus on traditional, Egyptian identity. This commentary is most widely recognized in his painting, The High Dam, in which he comments on the effects of modernization by the Egyptian government on society and their way of life. Since his death, his work has not ceased to challenge artists, intellectuals and critics both in Egypt and abroad. More on Abdel Hadi Al Gazzar

Hussein Fawzi (Egypt, 1905-1999)

Hunger, c. 1934

Ink on paper

35 x 20cm (13 3/4 x 7 7/8in)

Private collection

Born in Helmia district, Cairo on 4 September 1905, El Hussein Fawzi was known in Egypt and the Middle East for his pioneering work in the field of journalistic graphic arts. 

For two decades (1950 - 1970) he was a renowned book and press graphic illustrator. His illustrations were seen on magazine covers of Akher Saa, El Risala El Gedida and the child magazine Ali Baba. 

He was also the illustrator for many writings such as, the stories of Youssef El Sebai, El Gumhuria series "Omar Makram's Life" - which ran in 340 daily episodes - and for Naguib Mahfouz's novel Awlad Haretna, published in series in Al Ahram. More on El Hussein Fawzi

Farhad Moshiri (Iran, born 1963)

Alef, c. 2002

Oil on canvas

107 x 191cm (42 1/8 x 75 3/16in)

Private collection

Having completed his studies at the distinguished California Institute of Arts, Moshiri returned to his native Iran with a distinctly occidental artistic sensibility, experimenting with sound art, assemblages and new media. Moshiri sees his initial time in Iran as a developmental stage within his artistic progression, when his raw and capricious aesthetic temperaments were yet to be cogently anchored in any identifiable conceptual or visual agenda. More on this painting

Farhad Moshiri’s mixed-media practice spans painting, assemblage, and sculpture. Inspired by pop art and conceptualism, he has developed a profoundly hybrid aesthetics at the crossroads of the Middle East and the West. While he usually draws his motifs from American consumer culture (comics, advertising, pop music), he reinterprets them through equally clichéd traditional Persian craftsmanship. His embrace of delicate ornamental techniques, ranging from hand embroidery to calligraphy, offers an ironic and powerful contrast to his otherwise lowbrow visual references. His signature use of sparkly materials (beads, glitter, diamonds) further creates a palpable tension between the primarily figurative quality of his works and their inclination toward pure embellishment. Beneath its humorous and light appearance, Moshiri’s oeuvre takes on a slightly subversive dimension by touching upon his native country’s current transformation. More on Farhad Moshiri

Mohammad Ehsai (Iran, born 1939)

Yaquin Al Saqi (Absolute Certainty) 

oil on canvas, framed

signed and dated "1387" in Farsi (lower left), executed in 2008

203cm x 143cmcm (79 15/16 x 56 5/16in)

Private collection

Mohammad Ehsai is undoubtedly one of the most gifted calligraphers to emerge from Iran within the past century. Utterly devoted to the perfection of his craft, Ehsai has married the technical finesse of his formal training within a modern visual schema.

Traditional Persian calligraphy has historically been rife with ornament and embellishment; with calligraphic texts often accompanied by miniature paintings, encased in cartouches and flanked by a myriad of geometrical and floral motifs. Ehsai's approach to the craft, however, is markedly divergent, and in choosing the pure architecture of the Persian letterform as his principal subject matter, he relinquishes the visual excess of traditional manuscript art. More on Mohammad Ehsai

Farideh Lashai (Iran, 1944-2013)

Untitled (Still Life), c. 2013

Oil on canvas

150 x 100cm (59 1/16 x 39 3/8in)

Private collection

Farideh Lashai is remembered as one of the most talented and successful artists to have emerged from within Iran in recent decades. Meticulous, erudite and supremely perceptive, her work is characterized by a mastery of the painterly aesthetic, using the visual vocabulary of abstract and lyrical expressionism in depiction of ethereal natural landscapes, allegorical compositions, and colour fields. More on Farideh Lashai

Khadiga Riad (Egypt, born 1914)

Untitled, c. 1974

Oil on board, framed

41 x 55cm (16 1/8 x 21 5/8in).

Private collection

Khadiga Riad,  born in 1914 in Cairo, Egypt, studied at the Mere de Dieu college and from 1950 to 1954. She is regarded as Egypt's foremost female surrealist.

She followed an informal education in painting from the studio of the Armenian Egyptian artist Zorian between 1950 and 1955. In the 1950's she won fame as she was awarded a prize in the 1959 Alexandria Biennale. In 1960 she exhibited in the Venice Biennale and in 1962 she won the first prize in a national Egyptian painting competition. 

Riad adopted an abstract style characterized by the heavy use of a multi-layered paints delicately treated on the surface to give an ethereal and surrealist dimension to her compositions. More on Khadiga Riad

Inji Efflatoun (Egypt, 1924-1984)

The Dye Workers, c. 1950

Oil on canvas

50 x 61cm (19 11/16 x 24in)

Private collection

Inji Aflatoun (April 1924 – 17 April 1989) was an Egyptian painter and activist in the women's movement. She was a "leading spokeswoman for the Marxist-progressive-nationalist-feminist movement in the late 1940s and 1950s", as well as a "pioneer of modern Egyptian art" and "one of the important Egyptian visual artists".

Aflatoun was born in Cairo in 1924 into a traditional Muslim family she described as "semi-feudal and bourgeois". She discovered Marxism at the Lycée Français du Caire. It was her private art tutor, Kamel el-Telmissany, who introduced her to the life and the struggles of the Egyptian peasants] Al-Timisani was one of the founders of the 'Art and Freedom Group,' a surrealist movement that would have an impact on Aflatoun's development as an artist. In 1942, she joined Iskra, a Communist youth party. After graduating from the Fuad I University in Cairo, she was, with Latifa al-Zayyat, a founding member in 1945 of the League of University and Institutes' Young Women). The same year she represented the League at the first conference of Women's International Democratic Federation in Paris. 

She was arrested and secretly imprisoned during Nasser's roundup of communists in 1959. After her release in 1963, Egypt's Communist party having been dissolved, she devoted most of her time to painting. She later declared: "Nasser, although he put me in prison, was a good patriot." More on Inji Aflatoun

Inji Efflatoun (Egypt, 1924-1984)

Landscape, c. 1982

Oil on canvas

60 x 60cm (23 5/8 x 23 5/8in)

Private collection

Hussein Bicar (Egypt, 1913-2002)

The Rebab Player 

oil on canvas, framed

signed and dated "98" in Arabic (bottom right), executed in 1998 

70 x 50cm (27 9/16 x 19 11/16in).

"The painting is by the late artist Husain Bikar (1913-2002) entitled "The Rebab Player and the Bird", measurements 50 x 70cm, oil on canvas, signed in the bottom left and dated 98, in good condition. The painting is an authentic work by Hussein Bicar from his Nubia collection which he started painting in the second half of the 1980's. He had already drawn a quick coloured sketch of the painting which is illustrated in Subhi al-Sharuni's book on Bikar published by Dar al-Shuruq in 2002, page 114." - Esmat Dawastashy. More on this painting

Hussein Amin Bicar (2 January 1913 in Alexandria – 16 November 2003) was one of Egypt’s most prominent artists of the 20th century, after graduating from the Cairo higher school of fine arts in 1934, he spent more than 60 years of his life teaching art at schools and universities and then through the press, he is credited for initiating a style of journalistic art that elevated illustrating for news papers to a level close to that of the fine art, he is known for his simple and clear style reflecting the influence of Pharaonic art with its harmony, serenity and mystic. Bicar’s journalistic contributions go beyond illustrations to include art criticism and narrative poetry. Being the first Egyptian artist to illustrate Arabic children’s books, Bicar has played a major role in establishing and promoting this field.

Furthermore, his portraits and oil paintings depicting graceful Egyptian peasants, Nubian scenes, Alexandria and Pharaonic themes as well as his elegant, gracious nature has earned him great recognition and honors. In the words of late journalist Mustafa Amin:"he is not a single artist, he is a master of several arts…he is a painter, photographer, poet, musician and philosopher".

He was of Turkish Cypriot extraction[2] and a member of the Bahá'í Faith. More on Hussein Bikar

Tahia Halim (Egypt, 1919-2003)

Le Ciel Les Soleil Noire, c. 1950

Oil on wood

33 x 48cm (13 x 18 7/8in)

Private collection

Tahia Mohammed Halim, (Egypt, 1919-2003), was an Egyptian painte, and one of the pioneers of the Modern Expressive Movement in Egyptian Art in the 1960s, where she excelled in expressing the Egyptian character’s idiosyncrasies in her works. She has many works concerning the Nile, boats and the popular and national subjects for which she has been granted several honorary awards in Egypt and abroad.

Tahia Halim was born in Sudan, where her family were living. Her primary education was inside the Royal Palace of Cairo, where she was raised, as her father was the laureate of King Fuad I of Egypt.

Tahia Halim studied art under important drawing teachers as the Lebanese painter Yussef Trabelsi and the Greek artist Gerom; then under the Egyptian artist Hamed Abdullah at his studio 1943, they married in 1945, then left for Paris to join the  Julian Academy (1949-1951). After returning to Egypt, they taught art, together, in their private studio, in Down Town (near Tahrir Square) in Cairo. Tahia Halim received two devotion scholarships of Art Production in 1960 and in 1975. More on Tahia Mohammed Halim

Salah Taher (Egypt, 1911-2007)

Nubian Face 

oil on paper, framed

signed "S.TAHER" in English (lower right)

45 x 32cm (17 11/16 x 12 5/8in)

Salah Taher (1911–2007) was an Egyptian painter.

He worked for some time as a drawing and art teacher in Al-Abaseyya High School in Alexandria. He went on to fame in the 1960s as he was appointed head of the Museum of Modern Arts. In 1962, he was appointed head of the Opera. In 1966, he joined Al-Ahram. He painted more than 35 paintings, for Al-Ahram that decorate the walls of its building. Overall, he painted 15000 paintings and held more than 80 art fairs for his work in Egypt, Venice, New York City, San Francisco, Geneva, Beirut, Kuwait and Jeddah. He also participated in 67 collective fairs in Egypt.

He’s work is also part of the White House collection and is on rotation and often displayed in the White House

His work was shown in numerous exhibitions sometimes in collaboration with institutions like the Institut des cultures arabes et méditerranéennes in Geneva.2017.

He was granted the highest awards in Egypt and internationally, among them in 1961 was the Guggenheim Award. In 2001, he was honored alongside Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz in the soft opening of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which was entitled “The brush and the pen," by publishing a book about his work.

His work in collected by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, and included in its permanent exhibition. In 2018, his work titled 'Metaphysic' was acquired by the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah and is now part of a long-term exhibition at the Sharjah Art Museum. More on Salah Taher

Seif Waly (Egypt, 1906-1979)

View of Maks - Alexandria, c. 1966 

Oil on board

49 x 70cm (19 5/16 x 27 9/16in)

Private collection

Seif was was one of the seminal instigators of Egyptian Modernism after studying at the studio of the Italian Artist Otorino Becchi. He also studied at Hassan Kamel school (Social Fine Art Association in Alexandria) and attained the Honorary PhD in Art from the Fine Art Academy in Egypt. More on this painting

Seif Waly (March 31, 1906 – February 15, 1979) was an Egyptian painter, born Mohammed Seif al-Din Waly into an aristocratic family, of Turkish origin, in Alexandria, Egypt. He was introduced to modern art after studying at the studio of the Italian artist Otorino Becchi. In 1942 he set up his own studio with his brother Adham Wanly (below) and together they participated in more than 17 exhibitions, notably in the Biennale of Venice and in São Paulo, Brazil. Today an entire floor of the Mahmoud Said Museum in Alexandria is dedicated to Seif and Adham Wanly.

His work is collected by several Museums, including Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Darat AL Funoon in Amman.

He died in 1979 at Stockholm at age of 72. More on Seif Waly

Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (Iran, born 1937)

SAT + HE + SAT, c. 1973

Acrylic and mineral pigment on canvas

214 x 132cm (84 1/4 x 51 15/16in).

Private collection

Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (born 1937 Tehran) is an Iranian painter and sculptor, known especially as a pioneer of Iranian modern art.

Zenderoudi went to the College of Fine Arts and the College of Decorative Arts in Tehran and has had work exhibited in various parts of the world including Paris (1959-1563), Tehran (1960-1966), Sao Paulo (1963), and Venice (1964). The influence of Iranian Shi'ite folk art was seen in his exhibition at the Third Tehrān Biennale; the works were made up of geometric shapes and decorated with calligraphy. In fact, the term Saqqakhana was first used by the Iranian critic Karim Emami to describe Zenderoudi's art. Zenderoudi's interest in calligraphy was developed further in his works of the late 1960s and 1970s. More on Charles Hossein Zenderoudi 

Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (Iran, born 1937)

AZIMECH, c. 1986

Acrylic on canvas

118 x 100cm (46 7/16 x 39 3/8in)

Private collection

Azimech is a star of the first magnitude in the constellation of the virgin

Nasrollah Afjei (Iran, born 1933)

Untitled, c. 2012

Ink on canvas, framed

90 x 90cm (35 7/16 x 35 7/16in)

Private collection

Nasrollah Afjei trained at the Iranian Calligraphists’ Association and was a key player in Paris’s avant-garde movement of the 70s, Lettrisme, in which letters formed the basis for visual works. In this painting, Afjei has repeated the Persian word eshq (meaning love) over and over. The act of repeating obscures our reading of the word, and instead crafts it into a wave-like field with a marble effect. Afjei’s masterful balancing of linguistic meaning with pure abstraction brings new depth to the lineage of calligraphy. More on Nasrollah Afjei 

Azra Aghighi Bakhsayeshi

Untitled, c. 2009

Oil on canvas

147 x 297cm (57 7/8 x 116 15/16in)

Private collection

Aghighi Bakhshayeshi is one of the only professional female calligraphic artists working in Iran today, using conceptual calligraphic writing as an art form. Inspired since a young age by the beauty and variations of Persian letters, the artist’s upbringing and social surroundings have allowed her to persistently absorb and devote her practice to advancing the traditional art form with a contemporary, universal appeal.

Exploring the variations of Persian letters, notably through Kufi script, Aghighi has a background graphic design; a descendent of the famous court calligrapher Mirza Karim Khoshnevish Tabhari, she studied at university under the renowned calligrapher Nasrollah Afjehei. Choosing to express the beauty of her works in a non-literal way – viewers can appreciate the aesthetics of her art as a purely contemporary visual work.

Of her work the artist says, “These writings are whispers in my mind that do not mean too much, like a meditation. Sometimes they could be poetry, prayers, or just a conversation. I am not trying to convey spirituality with my writings. Speaking only one language creates a barrier between me and the viewer if they do not speak the same language. I am hoping to reach out to a broader audience with my art as a universal message.”

Aghighi’s works can be found in collections such as the British Museum, London; Islamic Museum, Malaysia and Riyadh; among others. More on Aghighi Bakhshayeshi

Ali Shirazi (Iran, born 1959)

Untitled, c. 2012

Acrylic on canvas

180 x 180cm (70 7/8 x 70 7/8in)

Private collection

Born in 1960, Ali Shirazi's creative work was largely inspired by the 1970s. The 1970s were a period of consolidation and progress in the arts, most often defined as a response to the central tensions of the previous decade. Conceptual art emerged as a key movement, a partial evolution of and response to minimalism. Land Art took the artwork into the expansive outdoors, taking creative production away from commodities and engaging with the earliest ideas of environmentalism. Process art combined elements of conceptualism with other formal considerations, creating esoteric and experimental bodies of work. Expressive figurative painting began to regain prominence for the first time since the decline of Abstract Expressionism twenty years prior, especially in Germany where Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz became highly influential figures worldwide. New York maintained an important position in the international art scene, ensuring that global artists continued to flock to the galleries, bars and downtown scene there. Many of the artists who became so famous and successful in the 1960s remained leading figures. For example, Andy Warhol branched out into film and magazine publishing, the first type of cross cultural activity for a visual artist. This secured his reputation as a globally renowned celebrity in his own right. Towards the end of the 1970s, the emerging practices of graffiti and street art were beginning to gain attention in the fine art community. Artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were working in downtown Manhattan and guaranteeing that spray paint and tagging gained some validity as a fine art practice, a trend which would fully emerge and dominate throughout the following decade. International movements gained importance included feminism, which translated strongly into the visual culture, and photorealism which had begun in the 1960s and enjoyed momentous commercial and critical achievements. For the first time painters and sculptors from Latin America were embraced by the dominant critical and institutional levers in New York. In Japan and Korea, artists associated with the Mono-Ha movement explored on encounters between natural and industrial materials such as stone, glass, cotton, sponge, wood, oil and water, arranging them in mostly unaltered, fleeting conditions. The works focused on the interdependency of these various elements and the surrounding space, and had a strong focus upon the European ideas of phenomenology. The predominantly Italian Arte Povera Movement gained global recognition during the 1970s, with artists like Jannis Kounnelis, Mario Merz, and Michelangelo Pistoletto achieving international acclaim. More on Ali Shirazi

Nja Mahdaoui (Tunisia, born 1937)

Untitled, c. 2009

Ink and metallic pen on paper,

140 x 140cm (55 1/8 x 55 1/8in)

Private collection

Nja Mahdaoui, (born in 1937) is a Tunisian artist known for his use of calligraphy as a graphic art form. He has often been described as a 'choreographer of letters.

Nja Mahdaoui was born in Tunis in 1937. He initially studied painting and art history at Carthage National Museum, but was later, encouraged by the Director of the Italian Cultural Centre in Tunis, studied painting and philosophy at the Santa Andrea Academy in Rome (1966–68). He later moved to Paris to go to the Cité internationale des arts and where he attended courses at the École du Louvre. Mahdaoui returned to Tunisia in 1977 and currently lives and works there. More on Nja Mahdaoui

Tahia Halim (Egypt, 1919-2003)

Monestary - Wadi El Natrun

Oil on board, framed

69 x 120cm (27 3/16 x 47 1/4in).

Private collection

Tahia Mohammed Halim, (Egypt, 1919-2003), was an Egyptian painte, and one of the pioneers of the Modern Expressive Movement in Egyptian Art in the 1960s, where she excelled in expressing the Egyptian character’s idiosyncrasies in her works. She has many works concerning the Nile, boats and the popular and national subjects for which she has been granted several honorary awards in Egypt and abroad.

Tahia Halim was born in Sudan, where her family were living. Her primary education was inside the Royal Palace of Cairo, where she was raised, as her father was the laureate of King Fuad I of Egypt.

Tahia Halim studied art under important drawing teachers as the Lebanese painter Yussef Trabelsi and the Greek artist Gerom; then under the Egyptian artist Hamed Abdullah at his studio 1943, they married in 1945, then left for Paris to join the  Julian Academy (1949-1951). After returning to Egypt, they taught art, together, in their private studio, in Down Town (near Tahrir Square) in Cairo. Tahia Halim received two devotion scholarships of Art Production in 1960 and in 1975. More on Tahia Mohammed Halim

Adel El Siwi (Egypt, born 1952)

Untitled, c. 2014

Oil on canvas

140 x 120cm (55 1/8 x 47 1/4in)

Private collection

Adel El Siwi born in 1952 in Beheira, Egypt. He studied medicine at Cairo University between 1970 and 1976, but simultaneously indulged in independent study at the faculty of fine arts between 1974 and 1975. In 1980 he relocated to Milan in Italy, where he lived and worked for a decade before moving back to Cairo, where he continues to live and work.

His work has been included in a number of group exhibitions. He was invited by “Le Laboratoire: Sculpture Urbaine” to project his work onto historical buildings in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1996), Grenoble, France (2000), Alger, Algeria, (2003).

In addition to his career as a visual artist, El Siwi has translated numerous art historical texts into Arabic by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Paul Klee. More on Adel El Siwi

Tarek Al-Ghoussein (Palestine, born 1962 )

D Series Untitled 9 

Digitl inkjet print

100cm x 150cm (39 3/8 x 59 1/16in)

Private collection

'It's about looking at a space - how one relates to a space and how that space defines a person too,' says Palestinian-Kuwaiti artist, photographer and academic, Tarek al Ghoussain. 

Long considered amongst the most progressive and engaged photographers at work in the Middle East today, al Ghossein's intellectually-engaged and visually powerful imagery addresses the duality of his ethnic identity as the son of displaced Palestinians, growing up in the Gulf.

Much of al Ghossein's work deals with the intangibility of his Palestinian heritage. Placing the notion of a state, real in a collective consciousness yet ethereal in the world, he places himself in his works which becomes documentary artifacts of his active performances. More on this painting

Tarek Al-Ghoussein was born in Kuwait, his grandparents were Palestinian exiles who were unable to visit their native home. His father, Talat Al-Ghoussein, was a journalist, editor and a diplomat who served as the Kuwait ambassador to the United States in the 1960s. His family moved a lot during his childhood between Kuwait, United States, Morocco and Japan. He received his bachelor's degree in photography from New York University and completed his master's degree in Fine Arts from University of New Mexico. He held several positions during his career, worked as a photojournalist, taught photography at the American University of Sharjah and is currently a professor at New York University branch in Abu Dhabi. More on Tarek al Ghoussain

Hassan Hajjaj (Morocco, born 1961), 2008

Saida, c. 2000

Lambda Print

92cm x 64cmcm (36 1/4 x 25 3/16in)

Private collection

• A wonderful example of Moroccan-born photographer Hassan Hajjaj's pop art sourced from the souks and alleyways of modern day Morocco, 'Saida' represents this idiosyncratic artist's continuing fascination with notions of identity and representation. Appropriating and re-contextualising traditional 'Orientalist' views of women, Hajjaj playfully subverts the tropes and clichés of the Islamic world. More on this painting

Hassan Hajjaj (b. Larache, Morocco in 1961) is a contemporary artist who lives and works between London, UK and Marrakech, Morocco, and is known as the “Andy Warhol of Marrakech.”

Hajjaj's work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the British Museum, London; the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC; the Newark Museum, New Jersey; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Farjam Collection, Dubai; Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris; Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunisia; and Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA.

Hajjaj was the winner of the 2011 Sovereign Middle East and African Art Prize and was shortlisted for Victoria and Albert Museum's Jameel Prize in 2009. In 2013, Rose Issa Projects published a monograph of the artist exploring his upbringing in Morocco and London, his experiences in fashion and interior design, and his adventures in the music industry influence the vibrant colours, joyful spirit, and visual rhythm of his highly sought-after images.

Hajjaj's first feature-length film, Karima: A Day in the Life of a Henna Girl, premiered at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in May 2015. The film takes viewers into the world of one Hajjaj’s most iconic series, Kesh Angels, depicting the henna girls of Marrakesh. The film will be subsequently shown at Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland in June 2015, curated by Cairo-based film curator and lecturer Maxa Zoller. More on Hassan Hajjaj

Ali Omar Ermes (Libya, born 1945)

Ya 

Arcylic and gouache on paper

80 x 117cm (31 1/2 x 46 1/16in)

Private collection

Ali Omar Ermes (born 1945) was a Libyan artist and author. His paintings make use of Arabic calligraphy, often superimposed on a rich-textured ground, and may incorporate fragments of Arabic or other poetry or prose.[1] He had lived in the United Kingdom since 1981, and was the chairman of the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in Kensington in west London; he was also active in other intellectual and cultural institutions in that city. More on Ali Omar Ermes

Ali Omar Ermes (Libya, born 1945)

Hou 

Arcylic and gouache on paper

x 100cm (70 x 39 3/8in)

Private collection

Ali Omar Ermes (born 1945)

HH 

Arcylic and gouache on paper

70 x 100cm (27 9/16 x 39 3/8in)

Private collection

Hosni Banani (Egypt, 1912-1989)

Nude, 1965

Iil on canvas

40 x 30cm (15 3/4 x 11 13/16in)

Private collection

El Banani (b 1912 – d 1988) graduated from the Higher School of Fine Arts, where he studied under the artist Youssef Kamel and received National Certificate of Art Teaching in 1937, and the Diploma of the Academy in Rome in 1940. He may be considered the successor of his professor, Youssef Kamel, in his following the Impressionist style with its touches of movement and its attraction for brilliant light and his use of ramble colors in drawing the same subjects that interested his teacher: the Egyptian alley, the village, people’s interaction with nature and with rural architecture, and the con gregation of cat tle at village markets, and boats and boatmen. However, his works are relatively different from others in the amount of detail, and the strength of contrast between colors and thickness of his color pastes, which he applied with a palette knife. El-Bannany participated in several local and international exhibitions including: the Spring Exhibition of Alumni of Faculties of Fine Art, the Association of Fine Arts Lovers Exhibitions, the Exhibition of the Contemporary Fine Art in 1985, the Art in Arab World Exhibition in 1985, the Venicia Biennale, the Unesco Exhibition at Beirut and the Acquisition Exhibition in 2000. He was honored by medals of honors and certificates of merit for mural and in 1938 he was granted The International Award and the honorary prize at the Landscape Exhibition in Washington. More on El Banani

Georges Hanna Sabbagh (Egypt, 1877-1951)

Untitled, c. 1945

Oil on board, 

45 x 59cm (17 11/16 x 23 1/4in)

Private collection

Georges Hanna Sabbagh (1877–1951) was an Egyptian-born French artist, born at Alexandria to a Catholic family of Lebanese origin. He studied art in Paris, being the first Egyptian at the Louvre School. He was a pupil of Paul Sérusier, Félix Vallotton and the Symbolist painter Maurice Denis, and worked beside Amedeo Modigliani. His family and the region of Brittany provided him with subjects for many of his paintings, before trips to Egypt led him to rediscover the lights, landscapes and characters of his childhood. He excelled in portraits, nudes and landscapes both in France and in Egypt. A painter of talent, Georges Sabbagh forms one of the group of artists who Jean Cassou called "the sacrificed generation", absorbing the school of Les Nabis, Fauvism and Cubism at the beginning of the century, but forgotten after the Second World War.  More on Georges Hanna Sabbagh

George Bahgory (Egypt, born 1932)

Untitled, c. 1975

Oil on canvas

130 x 170cm (51 3/16 x 66 15/16in)

Private collection

George Bahgory creates cubist- style paintings that tap into the colourful history of Egyptian popular culture and heritage.

Beginning his career as a cartoonist in the late 1950s for a magazine called Rose El Youssef, Bahgory’s figurative style, sarcasm, and political awareness and satire infiltrated his later transition to painting. Among a generation of cartoonists that promoted the Nasserist ideology of Pan-Arabism, women’s rights and national reform, Bahgory infuses his artworks with the residue of Egyptian national history and culture. Periodically using references to popular icons of the era, like diva Umm Kalthoum, in his painted works, Bahgory’s paintings playfully evoke a sense of deep nostalgia, historical reflection and cultural preservation. “With every stroke of the brush I recall an Egypt that I don’t want to disappear,” Bahgory said in an interview with Al Ahram newspaper.

After completing a degree at Egypt’s Fine Arts Institute, Bahgory left his home country in the early 1970s to study at the Fine Arts Institute of Paris, where he lived for the following three decades. Receiving numerous prestigious awards, Bahgory has published six books, three of which were dedicated to art. Bahgory’s work has been showcased internationally, including in the Middle East and Europe. More on George Bahgory

Mohammad Ehsai (Iran, born 1939)

Untitled (Allah) 

Acrylic and gold-leaf on board

70 x 50cm (27 9/16 x 19 11/16in)

Private collection

Mohammad Ehsai is undoubtedly one of the most gifted calligraphers to emerge from Iran within the past century. Utterly devoted to the perfection of his craft, Ehsai has married the technical finesse of his formal training within a modern visual schema.

Traditional Persian calligraphy has historically been rife with ornament and embellishment; with calligraphic texts often accompanied by miniature paintings, encased in cartouches and flanked by a myriad of geometrical and floral motifs. Ehsai's approach to the craft, however, is markedly divergent, and in choosing the pure architecture of the Persian letterform as his principal subject matter, he relinquishes the visual excess of traditional manuscript art. More on Mohammad Ehsai

Mahmoud Abdel-Mawgoud Mohammed Menaysy (Egypt, born 1970)

Untitled, c. 2014

Oil on canvas, 

60 x 84cm (23 5/8 x 33 1/16in)

Private collection

In few years Mahmoud Abdel-Mawgoud Mohammed Menaysy was able to unleash his deep powerful art character submitting it to experience the Modern Art. In the last two years, this young talented artist introduced important answers to art perplexes. For instance how to tackle the contradiction thesis and the importance of shock and contrast.

If he tackles woman’s body, he will incarnate the ethereal treasure that carry the space to express the entire existence of universe, thus it would be the cold deaf material that explodes to protest against all solid, cold, soft, thick, soulless, and mindless.

Even though, Menaysy still faithful to the system and method, even his keen on the systematic aestheticism margined his original theory of omission and protest, settle it among shock and contrast factors to unveil the artificial consumed stereotyped.

Ahmed Fouad Selim, More on Mahmoud Abdel-Mawgoud Mohammed Menaysy

Bahram Hanafi (Iran, born 1966)

Untitled, c. 2014

Acrylic on canvas,

150 x 98cm (59 1/16 x 38 9/16in)

Private collection

Bahram Hanafi’s first verified exhibition was Painting, Sculpture at Mah Art Gallery in Tehran in 2008, and the most recent exhibition was Summer Exhibition at Mah Art Gallery in Tehran in 2018. Bahram Hanafi is most frequently exhibited in Iran, but also had exhibitions in United Kingdom. Hanafi has at least one solo show and 6 group shows over the last 10 years (for more information, see biography). A notable show was Calligraphy & Painting at Mah Art Gallery in Tehran in 2013. Another notable show was at Mah Art Gallery in Tehran. Bahram Hanafi has been exhibited with Sadegh Tabrizi and Wahed Khakdan. More on Bahram Hanafi

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