Shakir Hassan Al Said (Iraq, 1925-2004) Hob al-Watan min al Iman (Loving the Homeland is Part of Faith) mixed media on wooden panel signed and dated 1982 110 x 90cm (43 5/16 x 35 7/16in). Footnotes: Provenance: Property from the collection of the renowned Iraqi architect Mohammed Saleh Makiya (1914-2015) Thence by descent to the present owner Exhibited: The Commemorative Exhibition of Shakir Hassan Al-Said, Salam House, The Humanitarian Dialogue Foundation, 2011 Published: Catalogue of The Commemorative Exhibition of Shakir Hassan Al-Said, Salam House, The Humanitarian Dialogue Foundation, 2011 Ahmed Naji, Under the Palm Trees, Modern Iraqi Art with Mohamed Makiya and Jewad Selim, 2019, Rizzoli International 'The wall for Al Said since late 1970s was a 'mirror of reality' with all its cracks, marks, and graffiti . Al Said's wall paintings are a static surface with a dynamic record' 'Loving the homeland is part of faith' Shakir Hassan Al Said By Dr Ahmed Naji 25 April 2021 In 1983, the same year in which this outstanding artwork by Al Said was made, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra wrote in his famous concise survey of art in Iraq : 'No Iraqi artist has written about art in general, and about the artist's reflections on his own work in particular, as much as Shakir Hassan al Said.' Jabra went on to explain the significance of Al Said's writing not only on his art but also on Iraqi art in general; 'His writings over the last twenty-five years have come to form a sort of a body of doctrine which, though not easy to define, has had a considerable influence on the direction the Iraqi art movement has sometimes taken after Jewad Selim's death.' Reflecting on art to Al Said was an integral part of his art, as much as art was an integral part of his thought and existence. The artist had a progressive diverse oeuvre, though equally not easy to sum up, that is akin to a scientist looking into the entire universe through a powerful microscope; with every increasing power of magnification, a new layer of the universe is revealed without losing its relation to the preceding or succeeding layers. In his early career with Jewad Selim and the Baghdad Modern Art Group of 1951, he used figurative representation as a medium for appropriating Iraq's ancient heritage through an international modernist art lens in dialogue with cubism, fauvism etc, to create a local art movement. A few years later, during his studies in Paris between 1955 and 1959, Al Said discovered the importance of the surface texture of the artwork made by the layers of paint, instead of figurative representation, as the connection between the ancient, modern and contemporary art. Al Said discovered that texture was the essence which he saw daily in Paris both in Mesopotamian art in the Louvre and the modern art on display in the art galleries of Rue de Seine. This discovery; which he termed as 'a time-period migration towards modern art' , unlocked a technical paradigm that transformed his art in the subsequent years. The objective of Al Said's reflection was and remains to seek 'a truth that keeps escaping the frameworks of material or subjective reality' . As an artist, he sought and expressed the truth by distinctly evolving his art from the 'figure' or 'shape' to the 'trace' which serves as medium to connect the self/person directly with the world through the artwork, without a perceived mediation of the artist himself. In 1973, Al Said utilised the Arabic letter as a tool to etch space and time on the surface of the artwork in a meticulous harmony between the artist, the artwork, and the environment; a practice and theory he termed as One Dimension . The environment we see in Houb al-watan min al-iman (Loving the homeland is part of faith), which was exhibited in Baghdad in 1983 is a wall from the early years of the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988) made of white cement and plaster, it resembles many walls that survived the aerial bombardment which the artist examined and reflected upon, for example, during his visit to Mandali , the town on the Iraq-Iran border to the east of Baghdad. The wall for Al Said since late 1970s was a 'mirror of reality' with all its cracks, marks, and graffiti . Al Said's wall paintings are a static surface with a dynamic record, as much as the mirror is a static piece of glass with a dynamic reflection of its surroundings, except that Al Said scores his walls with temporal and spatial codes that draws the viewer to delve into a deeper world, through the One Dimension of the surface and interpretation of the written letter. The word Houb (Love) captures the attention as the rest of the sentence gradually disappears into the whiteness of the scored cement. Al Said's love for his homeland during the war exists and persists like the multi-layered graffiti slogan 'Loving the homeland is part of faith' on the richly textured surface of the painting, a metaphor for the rugged and embattled Iraq. The popular slogan in this painting's graffiti resurfaces every now and again during different periods in Iraq, such as the war against ISIS in recent years, while many walls in Iraq still carry the scars of wars in a solemn remembrance of those who lost their homeland, or their lives, or both. This painting serves a spatio-temporal marker placed by Al Said in the physical and meta-physical conscience as an indelible trace of the truth. 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. Dr Ahmed Naji is an independent researcher and cultural advisor on art in Iraq and the Arab world. He is the author of Under the Palm Trees: Modern Iraqi Art with Mohamed Makiya and Jewad Selim, Rizzoli New York, 2019. (Instagram: ahmednaji_alsaid) For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com