The Story Behind the Shireen and Reza Khazeni Collection

by Tiffany Renee Floyd The Walid Damirji collection of Modern Iraqi Art comprises rare and important works by some of the important Iraqi artists of the 20th century, notably Shakir Hassan Al Said, Mohammed Ghani Hikmat, Ismail Fattah, Kadhim Hayder, and Faik Hassan.

Iraqi Modernists

An exploration of some of the works in the sale which depict interiors, exteriors or interesting subjects that raise the question - what was the artist looking at or thinking?

The Artist’s Gaze

London

Sotheby’s Modern &amp; Contemporary Middle East online-only auction features seventy lots and comprises artists from the Middle East, Iran, Turkey and North Africa. Two important private collections highlight the pioneering modernists of Iran and Iraq. Further important works from this early period hail from important Egyptian, Saudi Arabian, Lebanese, Turkish, Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian artists. A small component of the sale comprises contemporary works by leading figures in the field. Complementing the Love Letter to Beirut sale which takes place during the same week, we hope to forge new connections across the fascinating web of creativity that continues to stem from the region.&nbsp; SALE NUMBER L24228

Director | Head of Sale, Modern &amp; Contemporary Middle East

Alexandra Yasmina Roy

Senior Vice President, Head of Sales and Advisory, Middle East

Mai Eldib

SVP | Head of Contemporary Day Sale, Middle East

Ashkan Baghestani

Deputy Chairman, Middle East

Katia Nounou Boueiz

Deputy Director | Client Liaison | MENA

Yasmeen Gailani

Research Assistant

Angela Qin

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This Spring, we are pleased to present our bi-annual Modern &amp; Contemporary Middle East sale with a focus on important modernist and contemporary avant-garde artists from the regions encompassing North Africa, Turkey, Iran, and the Middle East. Comprising seventy lots, this sale is led by two private collections, both of which were put together for the most part in the 1970s, and with a focus on modern Iranian and Iraqi masters respectively. Further highlights include an early work by Fahrelnissa Zeid depicting the view from her studio in Istanbul, works by Saudi pioneers Abdulhalim Radwi and Taha Al Sabban, Egyptian female artists Inji Efflatoun, Gazbia Sirry and Khadiga Riaz as well as a few important Lebanese works by Etel Adnan, Huguette Caland and a rediscovered painting by Shafic Abboud. North African artists are also well represented, notably through Baya Mahieddine, Mohammed Melehi, Mahjoub Ben Bella, and Abdallah Benanteur.

Modern & Contemporary Middle East 

The 1950s was a formative decade in the story of Iraqi modern art. A core group of artists had returned from their studies abroad to take up teaching positions at Baghdad’s emerging art institutions, three influential art groups were founded and began exhibiting, several artists who would generate foundational legacies in Iraq graduated from Baghdad’s Institute of Fine Arts, and, most importantly, the artistic ideologies that would define Iraq’s contributions to modernism of the twentieth century were being codified in manifestos, exhibitions, and grand artistic experiments. The artworks in the Damirji collection emerged either directly or indirectly from this formative context. In this essay, Dr. Tiffany Floyd examines the ripples of this seminal decade through the works of sculptor Mohammed Ghani Hikmat. The decade of the 1950s saw several significant developments in the trajectory of Iraqi modern art. Formative artists like Faik Hassan and Jewad Selim returned to Baghdad after studying abroad and began employing their skills to capture the modernity of the city and the nostalgia of the countryside. Faik Hassan, for example, is known for his picturesque scenes of villages and marketplaces that transform in subsequent years to include stylized experiments in bold lines and dramatic colors. These artists also sought to cultivate and maintain a rigorous regime of artistic technique through their pedagogical endeavors at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, an institution that graduated several influential artists in the 1950s such as Ismail Fattah, Mohammed Ghani Hikmat, Shakir Hassan Al Said, and Kadhim Hayder. Themselves becoming mentors of future generations of Iraqi artists, these artists investigated both figuration and abstraction as means to express local sensibilities that were drawn from the peoples, landscapes, colors, and philosophies of Iraq. This project was collectivized through the manifestos, exhibitions, and artistic experiments of important art groups that were founded in the 1950s. Among these collectives was the Baghdad Group for Modern Art which was formed in 1951 under the leadership of Jewad Selim and Shakir Hassan Al Said. At its inaugural exhibition, the group presented a manifesto that articulated the foundational concept of īstilhām al-turāth – a concept whereby artists seek inspiration through an interaction with a claimed cultural heritage. The conscious engagement with Iraq’s cultural past manifested in a myriad of ways but primarily circulated around the practice of mining Islamic and Mesopotamian art for signs, symbols, narratives, aesthetic formations, and even emotive connections. These investigations were coupled with the modernist sensibilities of reductive form, linear dynamism, vibrant color, abstract vitalism, and transcendent philosophies to generate currents of visual expression that would last into the twenty-first century. Mohammed Ghani Hikmat joined the Baghdad Group for Modern Art when he was still a young artist fresh from the Institute of Fine Arts from which he graduated in 1953. His experiences with the group were fundamental to the development of his unique artistic idiom, which nevertheless owes much to his mentor and teacher Jewad Selim. Ghani’s hallmark focus on the human form and its abstraction into decorative elements is a principal characteristic of Selim’s experimentations with the body as well. Moreover, both artists exhibit a strength of gesture and movement, maintaining spontaneity and vibrancy even in weighty sculptural media. Selim and Ghani also share motifs, themes, and subject matter, like motherhood, family, labor, and history. Despite this early and strong influence, Ghani progressed along his own trajectories and pushed modern Iraqi sculpture into new territories based on his strengths of visual narration and calligraphic abstraction, rooted in a dedication to Iraq’s sculptural heritage. The four wooden and bronze figural sculptures in the Damirji collection demonstrate Ghani’s method of abstracting the body through an interpretation of calligraphic line and other Islamic design motifs, as well as the pointed repetition of Mesopotamian cuneiform script. In the untitled wooden sculptures, the beveled style of Abbasid Samarra is translated into the curve of breast or the swirl of clothing in motion. The bronze sculptures exhibit the angular replication of the wedged shapes associated with Ghani’s explorations of cuneiform. Both cultural influences are filtered through the sculptor’s modern practice that maintains the barest figural legibility in an effort to communicate the essence of the form as it exists in both compact stasis and pulsing transformation. Ghani created many iterations of this type throughout his long career, and all display his unique balance of figuration and abstraction that relies on the blending of exterior and interior formations to create a seamless unity that insinuates movement and indicates garments and anatomy. This same technique is used in Ghani’s masterful, multipiece bronze arrangement entitled The Marriage Procession, also included in the Damirji collection. In this compilation of reliefs, Ghani expresses his dedication to visual narrative, a tool he draws upon to communicate everyday celebrations and historical epics alike. In this work, the sculptor has rendered guests, bride and groom, food vendors, dancers, and musicians in various poses that simulate motion, individuality, and sentiment. Each of the twenty-eight figures is also imbued with Ghani stylistic use of sinuous lines that flow inward and outward curving over the folds and bulges of body, dress, and accoutrement creating a formal vibration that compliments the exuberance of the subject matter. The creativity and vitality of Ghani’s works like The Marriage Procession coupled with his continual homage to the cultural heritage of Iraq has made him one of the country’s most beloved sculptors.

Untitled (The Three Wise Men)

Untitled

Technical Spatial Time (3)

Baghdadi Wedding Procession

Untitled (Mother and Two Babies)

Untitled 

Tiffany Floyd received her PhD in Art History from Columbia University with a dissertation centered on understanding the relationship between Iraqi modern art and the country's rich antique past. Her dissertation was a co-winner of the 2022 Middle Eastern Studies Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award. Floyd’s research interests include the politics of archaeology and time, petromodernity, postcolonial theory, modes of affective reception and the destruction/preservation of Iraq's cultural heritage. She has participated in several field projects, including the Modern Art Iraq Archive (2010-2011) and the Getty-funded Mapping Art Histories in the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (2020-2023). Floyd is currently an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Art History at the University of North Texas.