Lot Essay
Painted in 1954, Untitled is an exceptional example from Shaker Hassan Al Said’s early oeuvre. Informed by a semantic affinity with avant-garde art movements of Expressionism and Cubism, the work blends figurative and abstract elements. This work is an intimate depiction of a female’s profile in a classical, musing pose with non-naturalistic colour and features. The figure divides the composition into multi-faceted vibrant backgrounds formed by mixing patterns with schematic lines and edged and rounded shapes. The painting typifies Al Said’s 1950s style, inclined towards the classicising tendency of European Cubism. In flattening space and expression, he creates curvilinear and rectilinear geometry, combining colour, form, and texture, giving the painting a sculpted look. The modernist style of this painting is firmly rooted in Iraqi source material and heritage. In the arrangement of the painting with the woman harmoniously positioned against a background devoid of depth, Al-Said evokes the grandeur of palace reliefs from the Neo-Assyrian Empire. His figure alludes to Sumerian votive statues, characterised by their expansive almond-shaped eyes, robust shoulders, and petite and pointed nose. This work has been exhibited in the group show Mohammed Ghani Hikmat and Shaker Hassan Al Said in 1962 in Baquba.
Born in Samawah, Iraq, in 1925, Al Said, after receiving a degree in social science, studied painting at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad under the guidance of Jewad Selim. Together with Selim and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, he co-founded the Baghdad Group for Modern Art in 1951 before travelling to study art history and painting in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts from 1955 to 1959. Al Said was a prolific and influential artist who played a significant role in shaping the discourse of modern Iraqi art. In 1971, he co-founded the One Dimension Group, a collective that explored the boundary between the material world and the divine, where self-dissolution resulted from transcendence. Being aware of the methodology of Structuralism and Deconstruction, Al Said's artistic vision was deeply influenced by the existentialist treatise of Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche and the Sufi philosophy of eternity called al-Azal. He pushed the boundaries of traditional Iraqi art by experimenting with techniques that went beyond pictorial depiction, incorporating blot patterns into his works. A writer and visionary, Al Said wrote manifestos for both the Baghdad and the One Dimension Group. These manifestoes urged Arab artists to break away from the prevailing European artistic models, striving instead toward firmly grounding modern art in their local context. It marked a significant reorientation, coinciding with radical political changes and the rise of Arab nationalism. Al Said authored several books on modern art in Iraq and contributed numerous articles to Arabic journals and newspapers while teaching art history in Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Today, he is considered one of the pioneers of modern art in Iraq, with his influence spanning as an artist, writer, educator and theoretician of Arab art.
Born in Samawah, Iraq, in 1925, Al Said, after receiving a degree in social science, studied painting at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad under the guidance of Jewad Selim. Together with Selim and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, he co-founded the Baghdad Group for Modern Art in 1951 before travelling to study art history and painting in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts from 1955 to 1959. Al Said was a prolific and influential artist who played a significant role in shaping the discourse of modern Iraqi art. In 1971, he co-founded the One Dimension Group, a collective that explored the boundary between the material world and the divine, where self-dissolution resulted from transcendence. Being aware of the methodology of Structuralism and Deconstruction, Al Said's artistic vision was deeply influenced by the existentialist treatise of Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche and the Sufi philosophy of eternity called al-Azal. He pushed the boundaries of traditional Iraqi art by experimenting with techniques that went beyond pictorial depiction, incorporating blot patterns into his works. A writer and visionary, Al Said wrote manifestos for both the Baghdad and the One Dimension Group. These manifestoes urged Arab artists to break away from the prevailing European artistic models, striving instead toward firmly grounding modern art in their local context. It marked a significant reorientation, coinciding with radical political changes and the rise of Arab nationalism. Al Said authored several books on modern art in Iraq and contributed numerous articles to Arabic journals and newspapers while teaching art history in Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Today, he is considered one of the pioneers of modern art in Iraq, with his influence spanning as an artist, writer, educator and theoretician of Arab art.