Footnotes

• Exhibited:
  London, Kufa Gallery, Various Artists, A Hommage to Jewad Selim, 1989
  
  """"""'You draw on paper, crescents and signs that lead the traveler to your heart, arousing hope in Baghdad, who invited you into her mornings like a woman full of desire. You called your pictures by her name, like a lover who searches in the corners of memory for friendly signs, a square or a rectangle, a suggestion of a palm tree or a coffee pot, or the faces of tired women in love, hovering between al-Risafa and al-Karkh, between the beginning and the end of a dream ?"""""""" - Dia Azzawi "A Hommage to Jewad Selim"
  
  One of Ismael Fattah's most enthralling works, "Homage to Jewad Selim", is a stunning combination of the artistic dexterity and statuesque draftsmanship of Fattah combined with the thematic and aesthetic inspiration drawn from his subject matter: Jewad Selim. Mirroring the reliefs on the "The Monument of Freedom" in Baghdad which Jewad executed in 1958, Fattah's composition reflects the grandstanding, dynamic "nationalist revival" style captured by Selim in the now iconic monument.
  
  Ismael Fattah studied painting and sculpture, under the instruction of Jewad Selim, at the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad, from 1952–1958 (he received his Diploma in Painting in 1956, and in Sculpture in 1958). He went on to train in Rome, studying sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti, and ceramics at the Accademia San Giacomo, in 1964. Returning to Baghdad in 1965, Fattah taught ceramics, and later sculpture (from 1969), at the Academy of Fine Arts until the late-1990s. He was president of the Society of Iraqi Artists for Abstract Art, from 1971–78.
  
  He was also a member of the Baghdad Group of Modern Art, joined Al-Zawya in 1967,and was a founding member of the New Vision group (he exhibited his work at their first group show in 1969). Along with Selim, Fattah is regarded as one of Iraq's preeminent modern sculptors. Other than The Monument of the Martyr, his public commissions include the Monuments of Iraqi poets: al-Wasiti; al-Farabi, 1970–75; Lawyer's Union Façade, Ministry of Industry, 1967, and the Conference Palace, Baghdad, 1983.