Footnotes

A RARE AND IMPORTANT PAINTING BY KADHIM HAYDER

Provenance:
Property from the collection of Yusuf Al-Ani, Amman,
Acquired directly by the above from the artist, circa 1970's

Literature:
For a study of the present work, see Nizar Selim, Contemporary Iraqi Art, Sartec, Milano 1977, P.78

"A elegiac tone has marked the work of Kadhim Hayder
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.

Man defiant though prisoner, though martyred and quartered;
such has been his theme for a long time, partly derived from Arab
history as he understands it, where much of his modern vision is
rooted. But Kadhim Hayder has also employed his style in telling of
man in search of himself, in search of love, in search of wonder.,
He unabashedly mixes the figurative with the abstract, but having
devised a vocabulary of distinctly personal forms, the mixture serves
his purpose well, when figure and abstract seem to exchange function
and complement one another very much as in Sumerian art.

His Buraq is thus in part the horse of the Prophet's night journey, and in
part the soul's journey through the dark blues of man's endless night
of mystery."
- Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

THE PRESENT WORK

Vigorous, dynamic and intense, "Desert Forms" is a seminal work by one of Iraq's most enigmatic modern artists, Kadhim Hayder. Being offered in the market for the first time, the work comes from arguably one of the most prestigious of Iraqi collections, having been presented directly by the artist to renowned Iraqi playwright Yusuf Al-Ani in Iraq in the 1970's.

Kadhim Hayder was a master of weaving symbolism, poetic allegory and abstraction into compositions that were predominantly narrative in subject matter. As a poet, he had a lifelong fascination with the Shi'ite epic of the Martyrdom of Imam Hussein and this episode forms the subject matter of his most significant body of work, "The Epic of the Martyr" which was exhibited in 1965 at the National Museum of Modern Art. A popular subject in Shi'ite folklore, the story of Hussein's martyrdom has been a subject of both art and popular religious expression for centuries

The present work must therefore understood in reference to Hayder's wider cycle of works dealing with the battle of Karbala; in other compositions from the cycle, the white horses of Imam Hussein are seen mourning the death of their Martyr beneath an ominous moon. In this work, the battle is depicted in full flight; toying with abstraction in the geometrically stylized composition, Hayder's horses clash in a cacophony of overlapping shapes which evoke the destructive repercussions of the conflict they depict.

THE ARTIST: KADHIM HAYDER

Kadhim Hayder studied literature at the Higher Institute for Teachers; in 1957 he earned a diploma from the Institute of Fine Arts. Between 1959 and 1962 he studied theatre design at the Central College of the Arts in London. Upon returning to Iraq, he taught at the Institute of Fine Arts, opening a department of design. He continued to teach at the Academy of Fine Arts, when it replaced the Institute of Fine Arts; his book al-Takhtit wa Elwan (Sketching and Colours) became standard reading for students there. In 1971 he organized a group called the Academicians, based on an exhibition and around a text he wrote reclaiming a Platonic notion of the academy as a way to relate the different arts to each other, and to the arts of the past. He served as president of the Union of Iraqi Artists, the Union of Arab Artists, and the Society of Iraqi Plastic Artists.

Hayder began showing work while he was still a student, at a number of collective exhibitions held at Nadi al-Mansur, the major exhibition space in Baghdad during the 1950s. When his work and that of other young artists was rejected for exhibition at Nadi al-Mansur in 1958, he organized a counter-exhibition of the rejected. He also displayed his work at Al-Wasiti Gallery in Baghdad in 1964, and in 1965 he exhibited the series The Epic of the Martyr at the National Museum of Modern Art. Selected works from the series were subsequently shown in Beirut, both on their own, and as a prominent part of a collective exhibition of work by Iraqi artists at the Sursock Museum, a show that toured a number of European capitals under the sponsorship of the Gulbenkian Foundation.

His work was included in many major exhibitions throughout the 1970s, such as the First Arab Biennale, Baghdad, 1974; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1976; and the International Art Exhibition for Palestine held in Beirut, 1978. In 1984 he held a final solo show at the Iraqi Cultural Centre in London. His work was quickly acquired by private collectors, and thus it is only in recent years that it has entered public collections beside that of the Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad, such as that of the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Arab Art in Doha.

THE COLLECTION: YUSUF AL-ANI

The present work comes from the prestigious collection of Yusuf Al-Ani, a friend of Hayder with whom he mixed in Baghdad's cultural and artistic circles. Born in 1927, Yusuf Al Ani is considered one of the most prominent Iraqi playwrights of the 20th century. Politically motivated and highly charged, his seminal Anā ummak yā Shākir (1955; "Shākir, I'm Your Mother") graphically portrays the misery of the Iraqi people in the period before the downfall of the monarchy in the revolution of 1958.

In 1960 the General Foundation for Cinema and Theater was formed and attached to the Ministry of Culture and National Guidance. Al-Ani became its General Director. One of his first acts was to launch in 1961 the first theatre festival in Iraq. Three troupes participated, including the Modern Theater troupe, which presented Anton Chekov's play Uncle Vanya with great success.

The 1958 Revolution gave new impetus to the Iraqi theatre, which, under the direction of Yusuf al-Ani, made impressive strides. Several acting companies were formed, and the period witnessed the increased popularity of local and international plays.

However, in 1963 the Iraqi theatre suffered a setback when a coup d'etat brought a Ba'th-dominated regime that clamped down hard on the leftist intelligentsia. A new law disbanding all theatre troupes was decreed. Theatrical activity, in a word, came to a halt, and with it the theatrical career of Yusuf al-Ani.