Footnotes

Provenance:
property from a private collection, Amman
acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Ali Talib was born in Basra, Iraq in 1944. Talib studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad, receiving his bachelor degree in Painting in 1966. After graduating, he joined the faculty of the Institute of Fine Arts where he worked as a lecturer throughout the 1970s. Talib was a founding member of the Innovationists and after moving to his birthplace, Basra, for a short time, he formed the Shadow Group; he was also a member of the New Vision Group. In 1980, Talib went on to obtain a Master's degree in graphic design at Helwan University, Cairo.

From 1991 to 1997, he taught at University of Yarmouk in Jordan. In 1964, Talib held his first solo exhibition at Mubarakia Gallery, Kuwait, while he was still a student at the Academy. Further solo shows include National Museum of Modern Art, Baghdad, 1976; Gallery d'Art 50x70, Beirut, 1994; De Vrije Academie, The Hague, 2003; United Nation Humans Settlements Programme, Barcelona, 2004; Green Art Gallery, Dubai, 2008; and Karim Gallery, Amman, 2009.

He has also participated in a number of biennales and triennales as well as major group shows including Four Iraqi Artists, Alif Gallery, Washington, DC, 1994; Cité International des Arts Exhibition, Paris, 2004; Iraqi Artists in Exile, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas, 2009, and Art in Iraq Today (with fellow New Vision members Dia Azzawi and Rafa Nasiri), Meem Gallery, Dubai, 2011.

In 1986, Talib was awarded First Prize at the First Baghdad International Festival of Plastic Arts and First Prize at the Second Sharjah Biennale, in 1995. His work is held in collections including Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha and Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman. He lives and works between Amman and The Hague.

The time Talib lived in Egypt was significant for his artistic career in that he was enriched and gained new subjects, new additions, either in viewing the colours or in the way of dealing with the surface of the canvas of the artwork, or the relationships that compose the elements of the artworks. It is no secret that he was heavily influenced by Pharaonic art.

In Ali Talib's paintings there is a repeated attempt to say what is almost impossible to articulate. Right from the start, a basic conflict, which seems to derive from the depths of the unconscious, activates his work, creating a tension symptomatic of all significant works of art, capable of multiplicity of suggestions and interpretations. His particular interest was masking and disguising faces, concealing identities which were dramatically portrayed indicating some sort of secret dialogue.

"His paintings skilfully tackle an experience insistent with its inner contradictions: evasive and recurrent, leaving its impact each time in certain forms on the canvas-and in our memory." - Jabra Ibrahim Jabra