Aziz Art August 2018

AZIZ ART
August 2018
Giorgio de Chirico
HALA KHAYAT
Ismail al-Shaikhly
Shakir Hassan Al
Said

1-Giorgio de Chirico
11-Hala Khayat
13-Ismail al-Shaikhly
19-Shakir Hassan Al Said
Director: Aziz Anzabi
Editor : Nafiseh Yaghoubi
Translator : Asra Yaghoubi
Research: Zohreh Nazari
http://www.aziz_anzabi.com

Giorgio de Chirico
10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978
was an Italian artist and writer. In
the years before World War I, he
founded the scuola metafisica art
movement, which profoundly
influenced the surrealists. After
1919, he became interested in
traditional painting techniques,
and worked in a neoclassical or
neo-Baroque style, while
frequently revisiting the
metaphysical themes of his earlier
work.
Life and works
De Chirico was born in Volos,
Greece, to a Genoan mother and a
Sicilian father.[After studying art at
Athens Polytechnic—mainly under
the guidance of the influential
Greek painters Georgios Roilos
and Georgios Jakobides—and
Florence, he moved to Germany in
1906, following his father's death
in 1905. He entered the Academy
of Fine Arts in Munich, where he
studied under Max Klinger and
read the writings of the
philosophers Nietzsche, Arthur
Schopenhauer and Otto
Weininger. There, he also studied
the works of Arnold Böcklin.
He returned to Italy in the summer
of 1909 and spent six months in
Milan. At the beginning of 1910, he
moved to Florence where he
painted the first of his
'Metaphysical Town Square' series,
The Enigma of an Autumn
Afternoon, after the revelation he
felt in Piazza Santa Croce. He also
painted The Enigma of the Oracle
while in Florence. In July 1911 he
spent a few days in Turin on his way
to Paris. De Chirico was profoundly
moved by what he called the
'metaphysical aspect' of Turin,
especially the architecture of its
archways and piazzas. De Chirico
moved to Paris in July 1911, where
he joined his brother Andrea.
Through his brother he met Pierre
Laprade, a member of the jury at
the Salon d'Automne, where he
exhibited three of his works:
Enigma of the Oracle, Enigma of an
Afternoon and Self-Portrait. During
1913 he exhibited paintings at the
Salon des Indépendants and Salon
d’Automne; his work was noticed
by Pablo Picasso and Guillaume
Apollinaire, and he sold his first
painting, The Red Tower. In 1914,
through Apollinaire, he met the art
1

dealer Paul Guillaume, with whom
he signed a contract for his artistic
output.
At the outbreak of World War I,
he returned to Italy. Upon his
arrival in May 1915, he enlisted in
the army, but he was considered
unfit for work and assigned to the
hospital at Ferrara. Here he met
with Carlo Carrà and together they
founded the pittura metafisica
movement.[2] He continued to
paint, and in 1918, he transferred
to Rome. Starting from 1918, his
work was exhibited extensively in
Europe.
De Chirico is best known for the
paintings he produced between
1909 and 1919, his metaphysical
period, which are characterized
by haunted, brooding moods
evoked by their images. At the
start of
this period, his subjects were still
cityscapes inspired by the bright
daylight of Mediterranean cities,
but gradually he turned his
attention to studies of cluttered
storerooms, sometimes inhabited
by mannequin-like hybrid figures.
In autumn, 1919, de Chirico
published an article in Valori plastici
entitled "The Return of
Craftsmanship", in which he
advocated a return to traditional
methods and iconography.This
article heralded an abrupt change
in his artistic orientation, as he
adopted a classicizing manner
inspired by such old masters as
Raphael and Signorelli, and became
an outspoken opponent of modern
art.
In the early 1920s, the Surrealist
writer André Breton discovered one
of de Chirico's metaphysical
paintings on display in Guillaume's
Paris gallery, and was
enthralled.Numerous young artists
who were similarly affected by de
Chirico's imagery became the core
of the Paris Surrealist group
centered around Breton. In 1924 de
Chirico visited Paris and was
accepted into the group, although
the surrealists were severely critical
of his post-metaphysical work.

De Chirico met and married his
first wife, the Russian ballerina
Raissa Gurievich in 1925, and
together they moved to Paris.His
relationship with the Surrealists
grew increasingly contentious, as
they publicly disparaged his new
work; by 1926 he had come to
regard them as "cretinous and
hostile".They soon parted ways in
acrimony. In 1928 he held his first
exhibition in New York City and
shortly afterwards, London. He
wrote essays on art and other
subjects, and in 1929 published a
novel entitled Hebdomeros, the
Metaphysician. Also in 1929, he
made stage designs for Sergei
Diaghilev.
De Chirico in 1970,
photographed by Paolo Monti.
Fondo Paolo Monti, BEIC
In 1930, de Chirico met his
second wife, Isabella Pakszwer Far,
a Russian, with whom he would
remain for the rest of his life.
Together they moved to Italy in
1932 and to the US in 1936,[2]
finally settling in Rome in 1944.
In 1948 he bought a house
near the Spanish Steps which is
now a museum dedicated to his
work.
In 1939, he adopted a neo-Baroque
style influenced by Rubens.De
Chirico's later paintings never
received the same critical praise as
did those from his metaphysical
period. He resented this, as he
thought his later work was better
and more mature. He nevertheless
produced backdated "selfforgeries"
both to profit from his
earlier success, and as an act of
revenge—retribution for the critical
preference for his early work.He
also denounced many paintings
attributed to him in public and
private collections as forgeries. In
1945, he published his memoirs.
He remained extremely prolific
even as he approached his 90th
year. During the 1960s,
Massimiliano Fuksas worked in his
atelier. In 1974 de Chirico was
elected to the French Académie des
Beaux-Arts. He died in Rome on 20
November 1978.
His brother, Andrea de Chirico, who
became famous under the name
Alberto Savinio, was also a writer
and a painter.

Style
In the paintings of his
metaphysical period, de Chirico
developed a repertoire of
motifs—empty arcades, towers,
elongated shadows, mannequins,
and trains among others—that he
arranged to create "images of
forlornness and emptiness" that
paradoxically also convey a feeling
of "power and freedom
".According to Sanford
Schwartz, de Chirico—whose
father was a railroad engineer—
painted images that suggest "the
way you take in buildings and
vistas from the perspective of a
train window. His towers, walls,
and plazas seem to flash by, and
you are made to feel the power
that comes from seeing things
that way: you feel you know them
more intimately than the people
do who live with them day by day."
In 1982, Robert Hughes wrote
that de Chirico
could condense voluminous feeling
through metaphor
and association ... In The Joy of
Return, 1915, de Chirico's train has
once more entered the city ... a
bright ball of vapor hovers directly
above its smokestack. Perhaps it
comes from the train and is near
us. Or possibly it is a cloud on the
horizon, lit by the sun that never
penetrates the buildings, in the last
electric blue silence of dusk. It
contracts the near and the far,
enchanting one's sense of space.
Early de Chiricos are full of such
effects. Et quid amabo nisi quod
aenigma est? ("What shall I love if
not the enigma?")—this question,
inscribed by the young artist on his
self-portrait in 1911, is their
subtext.
In this, he resembles his more
representational American
contemporary, Edward Hopper:
their pictures' low sunlight, their
deep and often irrational shadows,
their empty walkways and
portentous silences creating an
enigmatic visual poetry.

legacy
De Chirico won praise for his work
almost immediately from the
writer Guillaume Apollinaire, who
helped to introduce his work to
the later Surrealists. De Chirico
strongly influenced the Surrealist
movement: Yves Tanguy wrote
how one day in 1922 he saw one
of de Chirico's paintings in an art
dealer's window, and was so
impressed by it he resolved on the
spot to become an
artist—although he had never
even held a brush. Other
Surrealists who acknowledged de
Chirico's influence include Max
Ernst, Salvador Dalí, and René
Magritte. Other artists as diverse
as Giorgio Morandi, Carlo Carrà,
Paul Delvaux, Carel Willink, Harue
Koga and Philip Guston were
influenced by de Chirico.
De Chirico's style has influenced
several filmmakers, particularly in
the 1950s through 1970s. The
visual style of the French animated
film Le Roi et l'oiseau, by Paul
Grimault and Jacques Prévert, was
influenced by de Chirico's work,
primarily via Tanguy, a friend of
Prévert. The visual style of Valerio
Zurlini's film The Desert of the
Tartars (1976) was influenced by de
Chirico's work. Michelangelo
Antonioni, the Italian film director,
also claimed to be influenced by de
Chirico. Some comparison can be
made to the long takes in
Antonioni's films from the 1960s, in
which the camera continues to
linger on desolate cityscapes
populated by a few distant figures,
or none at all, in the absence of the
film's protagonists.
Writers who have appreciated de
Chirico include John Ashbery, who
has called Hebdomeros
"probably...the finest [major work
of Surrealist fiction]."Several of
Sylvia Plath's poems are influenced
by de Chirico. In his book Blizzard of
One Mark Strand included a poetic
diptych called "Two de Chiricos:"
"The Philosopher's Conquest" and
"The Disquieting Muses."
Gabriele Tinti has composed three
poemsinspired by Giorgio de
Chirico’s paintings; The Nostalgia of
the poet (1914),The Uncertainty of
the Poet (1913) and Ariadne
(1913),respectively in the
collections of Peggy Guggenheim
Collection.

Tate and Metropolitan Museum of Art. The poems were read by actor
Burt Young at The Met in New York
The box art for Fumito Ueda's PlayStation 2 game Ico used in Japan and
Europe was strongly influenced by de Chirico.The cover art of New
Order's single "Thieves Like Us" is based on de Chirico's painting The
Evil Genius of a King.
Honours
1958: Member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts
of Belgium.
Academie de France.

Selected works
Flight of the Centauri, Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon and Enigma of
the Oracle (1909)
Ritratto di Andrea de Chirico (Alias Alberto Savinio) (1909–1910)
The Enigma of the Hour (1911)
The Nostalgia of the Infinite (1911), or 1912–1913
Melanconia, The Enigma of the Arrival and La Matinée Angoissante
(1912)
The Soothsayers Recompense, The Red Tower, Ariadne, The Awakening
of Ariadne, The Uncertainty of the Poet, La Statua Silenziosa, The
Anxious Journey, Melancholy of a Beautiful Day, Le Rêve Transformé,
and Self-Portrait (1913)
The Anguish of Departure (begun in 1913), Portrait of Guillaume
Apollinaire, The Nostalgia of the Poet, L'Énigme de la fatalité, Gare
Montparnasse (The Melancholy of Departure), The Song of Love, The
Enigma of a Day, The Philosopher's Conquest, The Child's Brain, The
Philosopher and the Poet, Still Life: Turin in Spring, Piazza d'Italia
(Autumn Melancholy), and Melancholy and Mystery of a Street (1914)
The Evil Genius of a King (begun in 1914), The Seer (or The Prophet),
Piazza d’Italia, The Double Dream of Spring, The Purity of a Dream, Two
Sisters (The Jewish Angel) and The Duo (1915)
Andromache, The Melancholy of Departure, The Disquieting Muses,
Metaphysical Interior with Biscuits (1916)
Metaphysical Interior with Large Factory and The Faithful Servitor (both
began in 1916), The Great Metaphysician, Ettore e Andromaca,
Metaphysical Interior, Geometric Composition with Landscape and
Factory and Great Metaphysical Interior (1917)
Metaphysical Muses and Hermetic Melancholy (1918)
Still Life with Salami and The Sacred Fish (1919)
Self-portrait (1920)
The Disquieting Muses (1947), replica of the 1916 painting, University
of Iowa Museum of Art

Italian Piazza, Maschere and Departure of the Argonauts (1921)
The Prodigal Son (1922)
Florentine Still Life (c. 1923)
The House with the Green Shutters (1924)
The Great Machine (1925) Honolulu Museum of Art
Au Bord de la Mer, Le Grand Automate, The Terrible Games,
Mannequins on the Seashore and The Painter (1925)
La Commedia e la Tragedia (Commedia Romana), The Painter's Family
and Cupboards in a Valley (1926)
L’Esprit de Domination, The Eventuality of Destiny (Monumental
Figures), Mobili nella valle and The Archaeologists (1927)
Temple et Forêt dans la Chambre (1928)
Gladiatori (began in 1927), The Archaeologists IV (from the series
Metamorphosis), The return of the Prodigal son I (from the series
Metamorphosis) and Bagnante (Ritratto di Raissa) (1929)
I fuochi sacri (for the Calligrammes) 1929
Illustrations from the book Calligrammes by Guillaume Apollinaire
(1930)
I Gladiatori (Combattimento) (1931)
Milan Cathedral, 1932
Cavalos a Beira-Mar (1932–1933)
Cavalli in Riva al Mare (1934)
La Vasca di Bagni Misteriosi (1936)
The Vexations of The Thinker (1937)
Self-portrait (1935–1937)
Archeologi (1940)
Illustrations from the book L’Apocalisse (1941)
Portrait of Clarice Lispector (1945)
Villa Medici – Temple and Statue (1945)
Minerva (1947)
Metaphysical Interior with Workshop (1948)
Venecia, Puente de Rialto
Fiat (1950)

Piazza d'Italia (1952)
The Fall – Via Crucis (1947–54)
Venezia, Isola di San Giorgio (1955)
Salambò su un cavallo impennato (1956)
Metaphysical Interior with Biscuits (1958)
Piazza d'Italia (1962)
Cornipedes, (1963)
La mia mano sinistra, (1963), Chianciano Museum of Art
Manichino (1964)
Ettore e Andromaca (1966)
The Return of Ulysses, Interno Metafisico con Nudo Anatomico and
Mysterious Baths – Flight Toward the Sea (1968)
Il rimorso di Oreste, La Biga Invincibile and Solitudine della Gente di
Circo (1969)
Orfeo Trovatore Stanco, Intero Metafisico and Muse with Broken
Column (1970)
Metaphysical Interior with Setting Sun (1971)
Sole sul cavalletto (1973)
Mobili e rocce in una stanza, La Mattina ai Bagni misteriosi, Piazza
d'Italia con Statua Equestre, La mattina ai bagni misteriosi and Ettore e
Andromaca (1973)
Pianto d'amore – Ettore e Andromaca and The Sailors' Barracks (1974)

HALA KHAYAT
Hala Khayat is the Head of Sales
at Christie's Middle East. She has a
BA in Fine Arts & Visual
Communications from the
University of Damascus, Syria and
an MA in Design Studies from
Central St Martin's College of Art &
Design, London. She has held a
variety of roles in the world of art
and journalism, including working
as an Art Consultant for galleries in
Damascus. She is a regular speaker
on the history of Arab art and the
Middle Eastern Art Market.
It is not often that a private
collection dedicates itself entirely
to providing a full overview of
almost a century of art from one
region. However, during many long
years living in the United Kingdom,
Syrian-British couple Rona and
Walid Jalanbo viewed art collecting
as a natural link back to their
heritage and culture.
When the Jalanbos began
acquiring art some 30 years ago,
they did so with a view that Middle
Eastern art - particularly that from
Syria - was beautiful, rich in
diversity, and lacking basic support
from the international art world.
From early on, Rona and Walid
were devoted patrons of
contemporary art from the region,
encouraging many young artists
early in their careers with a buying
power that enabled them to
continue to plan exhibitions and
create. All works were bought with
an insightful curatorial eye – they
meshed important modern art
pieces with pieces from the
developing contemporary art
scene.
11

The more I got to know and work
with the Jalanbos, the more I saw
that they were choosing works
with a larger vision of eventually
setting up a public art foundation.
The idea was that this space
would one day develop into a
creative hub for all young
enthusiasts to come, share
ideas, and take inspiration from
the works on display. The plans
and location for the creative
space were in order but were
sadly halted when the Syrian
conflict began in 2011. Until that
point, the collection had only been
on view privately in the homes of
Rona and Walid. It was then that
their son, Khaled, took the
initiative to archive and
document the collection and
replace the plans for the physical
domain with this website.
The importance of a collection of
this scale going public cannot be
overstated. Not only is it
unearthing modern Middle Eastern
masterpieces by artists such as
Chaura, Moudarres, Kayyali and
Yagan that have never been
publically viewed before, but it is
also shedding light on
contemporary and emerging artists
from our region and increasing
their reach. This is a tremendously
exciting project for everyone in the
Middle Eastern art world,
particularly given the educational
and forward-thinking direction it is
taking.

Ismail al-Shaikhly
is considered an early pioneer of
Iraqi modern art. He developed a
unique style that resulted from a
diverse set of influences. His
mature works are instantly
recognizable for their abstracted
human figures, vibrant color
combinations, and obscured
backgrounds. However,
there were many iterations of al-
Shaikhly's favored subject matter,
Iraqi village life, over the course of
his career. Like others of his
generation of artists, al-Shaikhly
was a versatile painter who
experimented with various modes
of representation. As a result, his
oeuvre exhibits a range of stylistic
references and negotiations.
Al-Shaikhly was educated at the
Institute of Fine Art in Baghdad
and was a member of the first
graduating class of 1945. At the
institute, the artist studied under
Faiq Hassan, one of the leading
figures in the Iraqi art world, and
was his most gifted student. After
graduating, al-Shaikhly became its
first alumnus to study abroad,
attending the École Nationale
Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris
in 1951. He returned to Baghdad
and was an influential member of
the Pioneers Group, an artist
society founded by Faiq Hassan. He
became the group's leader in 1962
after Hassan stepped down. Al-
Shaikhly was also a founding
member of the Society of Iraqi
Plastic Artists and joined the Iraqi
Artist Society. Professionally, his
most distinguished position was as
the director general of the
Directorate of Plastic Arts in
Baghdad.
Al-Shaikhly's early work reflects the
influence of his mentor, Faiq
Hassan, and the artistic production
of these two painters has often
been compared. Indeed, there are
striking similarities between the
work of the master and pupil. They
both favored the Iraqi countryside
and village life as subject matter.
Likewise, the quaint,
impressionistic treatment of people
and nature in each of their
canvases hints at a close didactic
relationship between the artists.
However, this resemblance
characterizes an early period in al-
Shaikhly's career,
13

after which he would venture out
into his own artistic realm. His
mature style is abstract,
demonstrating the artist's interest
in form and color at the willing
expense of narrative but not
subject matter.
Women figure prominently as a
central theme in al-Shaikhly's
work. Throughout his various
experiments with representations,
he remained faithful to the
feminine form. He seems to have
been interested in the exploration
of a singular subject, perhaps
desiring to unleash its aesthetic
potential. It is significant that he
selected a subject that has
occupied artistic expression since
the daybreak of humanity, the
female body.
Oftentimes painting them in
groupings, the artist's females
gaze out at the viewer with
pointed stares. Simplified with
oval faces and generic bodies,
they seem to be in various states
of coming and going: to the
mosque, to the souq, to some
domestic chore. Yet they pause for
the painter to capture their
individual attitudes along with their
homogenous shapes. There is a
rhythm implied in the repetition of
ovals, squares, and strong curved
lines that reflects the pace of the
women's daily lives, as well as the
artist's interest in patterning within
the Islamic ornamental tradition.
In the artist's more iconic paintings,
produced in the last two decades of
the twentieth century, the female
groups move in and out of a fading
background. His subjects seem to
be wanderers in a hazy landscape,
sometimes dotted with triangular
shapes hinting at tent structures
and sometimes obscured
altogether. The women in these
later works occupy huddled spaces,
identifiable only by the Iraqi abaya
draped over their bodies. Color
occupies a premier place in each of
these canvases as he reduces his
figures to flesh-colored circles,
bright rectangular bodies, and black
coverings. These expressions are
filled with kinetic energy. By virtue
of the hurried brushstrokes and
color highlights, the feminine forms
seem to vibrate even as the
background fades.

Al-Shaikhly exhibited his work
prodigiously throughout the
world. He actively participated in
Baghdadi exhibitions by the
Pioneers and other artist
organizations in which he was a
part. Thus his work was highly
visible domestically.
Al-Shaikhly was also a part of
several group exhibitions abroad
and his work was displayed
in cities like Paris, London,
Ankara, Belgrade, Madrid, Jakarta,
and Delhi.
In 1955 and 1958, al-Shaikhly's
artwork toured counties like China,
Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, and India.
The artist's paintings were also
widely appreciated in the Arab
world as he exhibited in almost
every Arab capital. Al-Shaikhly's
works are held in the collections of
Mathaf: The Arab Museum of
Modern Art in Doha, Qatar and at
the Jordan National Gallery of Fine
Art in Amman.
Exhibitions
​1976 ​Against Discrimination, Baghdad, Iraq
​1974 ​Arab Biennial, Baghdad, Iraq
​1958 ​Contemporary Iraqi Art Tour: China, Russia, Bulgaria, Poland,
former Yugoslavia
​1955 ​Contemporary Iraqi Art Tour: India
​1954 - 1956 ​Al-Mansour Club, Baghdad, Iraq
​1953 ​Exhibition in Alexandria, Egypt
​1952 ​All 22 exhibitions of the Pioneers, National Museum of
Modern Art, Al-Riwaq Gallery, and the Institute of Fine Art, Baghdad,
Iraq
​_____ ​Exhibition in Beirut, Lebanon
​1946 ​Exhibition of the Society of the Friends of Art, Baghdad, Iraq

Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925–
2004), an Iraqi painter, sculptor
and writer, is considered one of
Iraq's most innovative and
influential artists. An artist,
philosopher, art critic and art
historian, he was actively involved
in the formation of two important
art groups that influenced the
direction of post-colonial art in
Iraq. He, and the art groups in
which he was involved,
shaped the modern Iraqi art
movement and bridged the gap
between modernity and heritage.
His theories charted a new Arabic
art aesthetic which allowed for
valuations of regional art through
lenses that were uniquely Arabic
rather than Western.
Biography
Al Said was born in Samawa,
Iraq; a rural area. He spent most
of his adult life living and working
in Bagdad.His rural upbringing
was an important source of
inspiration for his art and his
philosophies. He wrote about his
daily trek to school in the
following terms:
"On my way from school, I used to
see scores of faces, brown faces,
painful and toiling faces. How close
they were to my heart! They
pressed me and I passed them
again and again. They suffered and I
felt their suffering. The peasants
with their loose belts were pricked
by thorns. They were so close to my
heart!"
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 where he was taught by
Jawad Saleem.He continued his
studies at the École nationale
supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris
until 1959,where he was taught by
Raymond Legueult.[8] During his
stay in Paris, he discovered Western
modern art in galleries and
Sumerian art at the Louvre.After his
return to Baghdad in 1959, Al Said
studied the work of Yahya ibn
Mahmud al-Wasiti,sufismand
Mansur Al-Hallaj.He gradually
abandoned figurative expressions
and centered his compositions on
Arabic calligraphy.
19

With Jawad Saleem,
he co-founded Jama'et
Baghdad lil Fann al-Hadith
(Baghdad Modern Art Group) in
1951; one of the most unusual
arts movements in the
Middle East in the post–World
War II,that aimed to achieve an
artistic approach both modern
and embracing of tradition.This
specific approach was called
Istilham al-turath (Seeking
inspiration from tradition),
considered as "the basic point of
departure, to achieve through
modern styles, a cultural
vision".These artists were inspired
by the 13th-century Baghdad
School and the work of
calligraphers and illustrators such
as Yahya Al-Wasiti who was active
in Baghdad in the 1230s. They
believed that the Mongol invasion
of 1258 represented a "break in
the chain of pictorial Iraqi art"
and wanted to recover lost
traditions.After the death of
Saleem in 1961, al-Said headed
the group.
Al Said wrote the manifesto for the
Baghdad Modern Art Group and
read it at the group's first
exhibition in 1951. It was the
first art manifesto to be published
in Iraq. Scholars often consider this
event to the birth of the Iraqi
modern art movement.
Al Said also wrote the manifesto for
an art group he founded in 1971.
After suffering from a spiritual
crisis, the artist broke away from
the Baghdad Modern Art group and
formed the Al Bu'd al Wahad (or
the One Dimension Group)", which
was deeply infused with Al Said's
theories about the place of art in
nationalism.The objectives of the
One Dimension Group were multidimensional
and complex. At the
most basic level, the group rejected
two and three-two dimensional
artwork in favour of a single "inner
dimension". In practice, a single
inner dimension was difficult to
manifest because most artworks
are produced on two-dimensional
surfaces. At a more profound level,
"one dimension" refers to
"eternity". Al Said explained:
"From a philosophical point of view,
the One-Dimension is eternity, or
an extension of the past to the time
before the existence of pictorial
surface; to the non-surface.

Our consciousness of the world is a
relative presence. It is our selfexistence
while our absence is our
eternal presence."
Al Said actively searched for
relationships between time and
space; and for a visual language
that would connect Iraq's deep art
traditions with modern art
methods and materials. The
incorporation of callij (calligraphy)
letters into modern artworks was
an important aspect of this. The
letter became part of Al Said's
transition from figurative art to
abstract art. Arabic calligraphy
was charged with intellectual and
esoteric Sufi meaning, in that it
was an explicit reference to a
Medieval theology where letters
were seen as primordial signifiers
and manipulators of the cosmos.
This group was part of a broader
Islamic art movement that
emerged independently across
North Africa and parts of Asia in the
1950s and known as the hurufiyah
art movement. Hurufiyah refers to
the attempt by artists to combine
traditional art forms, notably
calligraphy as a graphic element
within a contemporary
artwork.Hurufiyah artists rejected
Western art concepts, and instead
searched for a new visual languages
that reflected their own culture and
heritage. These artists successfully
transformed calligraphy into a
modern aesthetic, which was both
contemporary and indigenous.
Al Said, used his writing, lectures
and his involvement in various art
groups to shape the direction of
the modern Iraqi art movement
and bridged the gap between
modernity and heritage.In so doing,
Al Said "charted a new Arabo-
Islamic art aesthetic, and thus
initiated a possible alternative for
art valuating for local and regional
art other than those allowed
through an exclusionary Western
canon of art history."

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