Footnotes

SHAKIR HASSAN AL-SAID: THE FAMILY COLLECTION

Rarely is an auction house privileged with the task of cataloguing, archiving and presenting for sale the private family collection of an artist who is considered one of the founding fathers of his countries Modern Art Movement; the sale of the present group of works by Shakir Hassan Al Said is one such occasion.

One of Iraq's most influential and prolific artists, Al Said, in 1951 along with Jewad Selim, founded the Baghdad Modern Art Group. On its launch Al-Said read out the Group's manifesto, the first of its kind in Iraq, an event credited with being the birth of Iraqi contemporary Modernism

Passed onto Al-Said's two sons, Mahmoud and Rabi', the present collection has remained unarchived and uncatalogued for the past two decades, and its present exposition marks a major landmark in the appreciation and understanding of Shakir Hassan's body of work

Moving from the Baghdad Group's signature "folk modernism" to his "One Dimensional Period" which explores the mystical dimensions of Arabic calligraphy, and through to his much later minimal "post abstract" numerological works, the family collection is perhaps the most comprehensive representation of the multi-faceted nature of Shakir Hassan's oeuvre; such is the variation both conceptually and aesthetically in his works, that it sometimes beggars belief that this body of work is the product of a single artistic mind.

THE ARTIST: SHAKIR HASSAN AL SAID

Born in Samawah, Iraq, in 1925, Shakir Hassan Al Said studied social sciences at Baghdad's Higher Institute of Teachers, obtaining his BA in 1948. He initially worked as a teacher of Social Sciences at Malak Secondary Education, the Ministry of Education from 1949 to 1954 before studying painting at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad and teaching art education later on. After his graduation in 1954, he received state scholarships to pursue his studies abroad. From 1955 to 1959, he studied painting and art history in Paris, at the Académie Julien, the École des Arts Décoratifs, and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts.

On his return to Baghdad, he taught art history at the Institute of Fine Arts from 1970 to 1980, and also taught painting and art history at the Institute of Art Education in Saudi Arabia from 1968 to 1969. From 1980 to 1983, he headed the Department of Aesthetic Studies at the Ministry of Culture and Information. In 1992, he worked as a counselor at the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation in Amman, Jordan.

In 1994, he founded the symposium of Aesthetic Discourse at the Saddam Art Center in Baghdad. Al Said was also a Member of the National Committee League of Art Critics, the Iraqi Artists Syndicate, the Society of Iraqi Plastic Artists and the Iraqi Teachers' Syndicate. He stayed in Baghdad until his death in 2004.