Iraqi Modernism - Shakir Hassan Al Said

Shakir Hassan Al Said (Iraq, 1925-2004)

Figure in Profile 

watercolor on paper

signed and dated in Arabic (lower left), executed in 1951

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

Published: Farouk Yousif, Al Said/Himat - A Story of the Unseen in Painting, The Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, Amman, 2010

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