Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private English collection
Formerly in the collection of Said Ali Madhloom
Acquired directly from the artist by the above

Exhibited:
House of Medhat Ali Madhloom, Jewad Selim, Baghdad, 1954
National Museum of Modern Art, Jewad Selim, Baghdad, January 1968

Published:
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Iraqi Art Today, Al Wasiti Festival, Ministry of Information, Iraq, 1972 (wood)
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Art in Iraq Today, Stephen Austin and Sons, 1961, p.2
Exhibition Catalogue, Jewad Selim, National Museum of Modern Art, Baghdad, January 1968
Abbas El-Saraf, Jewad Selim, Baghdad, 1972, p.22 (wood)
Shakir Hassan Al-Said, The History of the Plastic Arts in Iraq Part 1
Lensen, Rogers and Shabout, Modern art in the Arab World, Primary Documents, MOMA, 2018, p.152 (wood)
Journal of the Iraqi Petroleum Company, Vol 7, No.2, September 1954
Ahmed Naji, Under the Palm Trees, Modern Iraqi Art with Mohamed Makiya and Jewad Selim, 2019, Rizzoli International, Page 86

Note:
Another version of the present sculpture carved in fruitwood, sold in these rooms, October 2011, Lot 16, now in the collection of MATHAF Doha

The present sculptures (Lots 16 and 17) are two of Jewad Selim's most emblematic compositions. Instantly recognisable, striking, and deeply symbolic, Motherhood and Mother and Child are signature works by the pioneer of Iraqi modernism.

Exhibited, published and critically acclaimed, these works took part in Selim's landmark retrospective exhibition at the Baghdad National Museum in 1968. Executed in divergent mediums and in radically distinctive styles, they nonetheless present us with poignant and penetrating meditations on one of Selim's key artistic subjects: the concept of motherhood

Executed upon Jewad's return to Iraq after studying at the Slade, the sculptures are a hallmark representation of the Baghdad Group of Modern Art, with use of traditional Iraqi themes and motif's related within a distinctly modernist visual language. From the collection of the late Said Ali Madhloom who continued to preserve and care for these delicate masterpieces after resettling in the United Kingdom, they carry an immense significance within the history of Iraqi of modernism

"You have to know where you come from to know where you are going. The lines, forms and softly muted colours I use were favoured by artists as long ago as 2000 B.C, when the ancient cities of Babylon were the centres of art, learning and fabulous beauty"

- Jewad Selim

Motherhood is an undisputed icon of Iraqi sculpture and perhaps represents the apotheosis of Jewad Selim's work. The Baghdad School of Modern Art, co-founded by Selim, was deeply rooted in the countries glorious artistic past: the treasures of the Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian cultures of Mesopotamia, and by the great works of medieval Islamic craft. Concurrently, it was also inspired by the European avant-garde and its novel aesthetic experimentations, it was therefore always engaged in trying to create a distinctive style by combining elements of local heritage and currents of international artistic modernity.

Motherhood is the perfect embodiment of this artistic agenda. The theme of the mother and child was one that inspired in Jewad a latent sense of belonging to his homeland and ignited his deep affection for his mother. He came to realise that this theme was one of the prime motives for the production of art in ancient Iraq, being the symbol of fertility in one of the earliest agricultural civilizations in history. Selim could be said to have discovered his cultural roots in the bosom of motherhood.

Motherhood in this work is interpreted in a form of a crescent. The curved form inspired by a mother's body in an act of devotion, or a womb, ready to receive the ovule that hangs down by a thread connected to one of the two points of the crescent. The sculpture stands on a tripartite base that is suggestive of a woman's body in a state of labour. The star and crescent motif itself is a common feature of Sumerian iconography, the crescent usually being associated with the moon god Sin (Nanna) and the star with Ishtar (Inanna), often placed alongside the sun disk of Shamash.

Owing to the difficulties in accessing foundries in Baghdad at the time Jewad only executed the present work in plaster and fruitwood, rather than in bronze. The work is therefore a sculpture in its own right rather than a study or a maquette, having been exhibited during Jewad's lifetime and featuring in his major 1968 posthumous retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad

Selim was fascinated by the works of Matisse, Picasso and perhaps most of all by Henry Moore, but was also greatly moved by Ancient Mesopotamian art as well as Egyptian and Arab Islamic arts. Henry Moore was a visiting lecturer at Slade School of Art when Jewad Selim was a student. The influence of Moore's sculptures on Jewad is asserted by Shakir Hassan Al-Said, Jewad's student and colleague in his book Fusoul min Tarikh al Haraka al Tashkiliya fil Iraq, Baghdad, 1983, part 1, p. 211.

Moore's sculptures, which were heavily influenced by Mesopotamian art works, inspired Selim and led him to understand how this artist manipulated the rules of ancient Iraqi masters. What is particularly fascinating is the way that Selim takes visual cues from the Modern British sculptors active during his time at Slade, like Barbara Hepworth and her smooth curvilinear "wave" forms, without necessary sharing the same conceptual or thematic agenda as his British counterparts

"For me, Ancient Mesopotamian sculpture ranks with Early Greek, Etruscan, Ancient Mexican, Fourth and Twelfth Dynasty Egyptian, and Romanesque and Early Gothic sculpture, as the great sculpture of the world. It shows a richness of feeling for life and its wonder and mystery, welded to direct plastic statement born of a real creative urge. It has a bigness and simplicity with no decorative trimmings But for me its greatest achievement is found in the free-standing pieces – sculpture in the round, which is fullest sculptural expression – and these have tremendous power and yet sensitiveness" - Henry Moore