Abdul Qader Al Rais

Abstract

Abdul Qader Al Rais is a foundational figure in the art history of the United Arab Emirates and the wider Gulf. A visual chronicler, his work captures the UAE’s transition from a traditional merchant society to a global hub. By integrating Western techniques into regional subjects, he mirrors the socio-political challenges and displacements of the broader Arab world. His early paintings preserved collective memory by documenting the disappearing coral-stone architecture. His later, pioneering use of Hurufiyya (Arabic lettering) and abstract themes of Arab identity solidified his role as a keeper of traditional consciousness for the UAE and the region.

Biography

Early training in Kuwait

Though born in Dubai, Abdul Qader Al Rais grew up with an elder sister and her family in Kuwait, and his artistic practice was shaped by the country’s cultural landscape from the late 1950s through the 1960s. At that time, Kuwait served as the artistic and intellectual nexus of the Gulf, offering a liberal educational system and free training for young artists through the Marsam Al Hur (Free Art Studio). This provided Al Rais with access to art materials such as charcoal and oil paints, training in how to use them, and access to art historical monographs unavailable at the time in his native Dubai.

Al Rais began to exhibit his work internationally and sell paintings when he was still living and working in Kuwait, beginning around 1968. In his 1970 work, The Wait, he continued to refine traditional painting techniques learned at Marsam Al Hur by studying monographs of work by Dutch and Renaissance masters, and the French Impressionists—refining his treatment of light and shadow, tonal colour, and brush work—and wedding these skills to depictions of local subject matter. By doing so he revealed the political climate of the late 1960s, especially reactions to the 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli War. The painting depicts two boys seated on the ground, looking down sadly with their arms crossed; behind them are tents, suggesting that they are in a camp. A boy stands above them whose face seems to have been painted over with white brushstrokes, or perhaps his head is bandaged or has been rubbed out. The painting not only captures the despair of the thousands of Palestinian refugees who were displaced into temporary camps, but also the sense of Arab solidarity and regional anxiety felt across the Arab world at the time. Al Rais would have been familiar with contemporary Palestinian artists such as Ismail Shamout, who used social realism to document the human condition amid the region’s tragic geopolitical shifts. In the late 1980s, Al Rais would go on to create paintings such as Al Intifada (1988)—now in the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Art—featuring a young man depicted from behind, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, his head wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf. Al Rais shows him in the midst of some sort of protest action, surrounded by rocks, stones, and an abandoned car tire, throwing a stone towards his invisible foe, surrounded by historic Arab Mediterranean architecture—arches and walls not unlike those in the ancient cities of Jerusalem or Nablus. A large red, white, green, and black Palestinian flag floats horizontally above the stone-thrower’s head, providing a direct reference and, perhaps, a glimmer of hope to the struggle.

These relatively early paintings are rare in that they feature human subjects. Though Al Rais would continue to explore important social themes such as UAE identity, urban development, and the importance of cultural heritage, he would do so through his choice of subject matter and treatment of materials, as with Al-Malqaf and Decay (1980s).

Cultural Preservation and Urban Development

When he returned from Kuwait to the UAE in the 1970s, Al Rais encountered a landscape undergoing rapid urbanisation, driven by the burgeoning oil industry. Because the professional art infrastructure in the UAE—including commercial galleries and museums—did not emerge until the 2000s, Al Rais supported his practice by working as a labour inspector for the Ministry of Labour and, after obtaining a degree in Sharia law, though he did not practice as a lawyer. Though Al Rais never stopped painting during this time, he began to use watercolours rather than oil paints, since these dried quickly and could be easily transported to his place of work. This professional background informs the "conservative" yet highly disciplined nature of his career, which saw him participating in early exhibitions at sports clubs and libraries.

Al Rais’ work transitioned through the 1980s and 1990s toward a detailed documentation of traditional Emirati architecture. His nostalgic attention to detail focused on the coral-stone masonry and intricately carved doorways of the region’s traditional, pre-oil era architecture. His use of a soft pastel palette and watercolours effectively captures the atmospheric conditions of the Gulf, emphasising the harmony between traditional brick and mortar structures and the natural environment—a harmony he perceived as being lost to modern air conditioning and steel construction. Paintings such as Al-Malqaf and Decay serve as a critical record of the region’s vernacular architecture. Al Rais may have been highlighting the irony of indigenous architectural feats such as the sophisticated ancient cooling system of the wind tower being destroyed to make way for more expensive, unnecessary developments. By choosing to depict this traditional architecture, Al Rais ensured that his art would function as a repository for collective memory.

Hybridity: Between Western Technique and Regional Belonging

Al Rais’ early exposure to Western monographs sharpened his compositional skills and ability to blend colours and capture light, and this mixture of training and innate talent led him to blend different artistic techniques and traditions. His Impressionism series (1992) illustrates how, over time, Al Rais work became more colourful, often bridging the gap between traditional subject matter and modern aesthetic sensibilities—emulating the rapid pace of national and urban development in the Gulf region. For example, though his focus remained on the UAE’s landscape as a site of identity, the works comprising Impressionism series 9 combine detailed renderings of styles and motifs taken from traditional architecture in the UAE with a delight in Cubist-like geometric patterning.

​​Hurufiyya Letterisms and Modern Abstraction

In the later stages of his career, Al Rais came to employ a more graphic, abstract style, and this evolution is marked by his incorporation of Hurufiyya (Arabic ‘letterisms’). While Arabic calligraphy is a skilled art form in its own right, created by scribes trained for many years by master calligraphers, Hurufiyya is a modern art movement that utilises Arabic calligraphy as a formal element, focusing on Arabic letters as shapes that are blended together or incorporated as part of a composition. In Al Rais’ practice, letters are used in an abstract style that floats within the composition. They may also be used to express a gentle political intention, emphasising uniting features or commonalities within Arab cultures.

The triptych Bishra (Announcement) represents the apex of this period and a milestone in the Gulf art market. Sold at Christie’s first Dubai auction in 2008 for one million UAE dirhams, the first work by a Gulf artist to achieve such a valuation at auction. Formally, the work employs layering techniques reminiscent of Cubism and features Al Rais’ signature colourful diamond punctuation that mimics Arabic script and have become a hallmark of his abstract style. This shift demonstrated that traditional cultural symbols could be successfully recontextualised within a contemporary, international art framework. Al Rais’ blending of styles, colours, and letters is optimistic and broadly inclusive, resulting in numerous important national commissions and global exhibitions—most notably his commission for the 2015 Dubai Art Season, where carriages of the Dubai Metro were coated in images of his artwork. Other significant commissions include a large-scale painting of the UAE map bearing the names of the UAE’s founding fathers, commissioned for the entrance hall of Dubai’s Etihad Museum in early 2017, while a massive retrospective of his work was held at the Institut du monde arabe (IMA) in Paris, France’s national bridge with the Arab world, in 2018.

An Enduring Legacy 

Abdul Qader Al Rais’ paintings capture the aesthetics of the desert and echo the iconography of the UAE, two themes that resonate in UAE culture. They also express the importance of heritage and tradition within the rapidly developing visual and creative culture of the UAE. Although Al Rais moved toward brighter colours and geometry in the 1990s, the foundational techniques in his paintings—layering and light management— remained rooted in his early study of Western masters, adapted to the colours and culture of the Arabian Peninsula. Furthermore, his work maintains a consistent undercurrent of pan-Arab solidarity. He is one of a handful of Emiratis to have consciously positioned his creative practice within the broader geopolitical discourse of the Arab region. For these reasons, the trajectory of Abdul Qader Al Rais’ art career reflects the evolution of the UAE itself—from a local, traditional society to a global cultural hub—with Al Rais serving as the primary visual bridge between these two eras.

Permanent Collections

The artist’s work is in the collections of the Louvre Museum in Paris and the British Museum in London. In Asia, the works are held by the Shanghai Art Museum and the National Museum of Modern Art in New Delhi. Within the United States, the holdings include the Museum of Northwest Art and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture The work is also represented across the Middle East, with pieces in the collections of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi, the Etihad Museum in Dubai, and the Sharjah Art Museum. Further institutional holdings include various modern art museums, as well as national and state art museums throughout Qatar and Amman, Jordan.

Bibliography

Al Mullah, Alya, editor. Lasting Impressions: Abdul Qader Al Rais. Sharjah Museums Department, 2012.

Al Rais, Abdul Qader. 50 Years of Art - Manarat Saadiyat, 20 December 2018 .23 March 2019. Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, 2018.

“Abdul Qader Al Rais: Retrospective Exhibition.” Institut du monde arabe, 2018,

Makhlouf, Sophie Kazan. The Development of an Art History in the UAE: An Art Not Made to Be Understood. Anthem Press, 2024.

Seaman, Anna. “Abdulqader Al Rais Is Painting His Own Narrative at His Paris Retrospective Exhibition.” The National, 1 Oct. 2018, www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/art/abdulqader-al-rais-is-painting-his-own-narrative-at-his-paris-retrospective-exhibition-1.775686.

Seaman, Anna. “Inside the Dubai Home Studio of Emirati Artist Abdul Qader Al Rais.” The National, 6 July 2015, www.thenationalnews.com/arts/inside-the-dubai-home-studio-of-emirati-artist-abdul-qader-al-rais-1.2788.

Shaffi, Musfira. “Abdul Qader Al Rais Gives the Dubai Metro Carriages an Artistic Makeover.” Vogue Man. 29 April 2015.

Sikorski, Suzy. “Abdul Qader Al Rais - Text Interview.” Interview by Mideast Art, 20 May 2020, www.mideastart.com/blog/abdul-qader-al-rais-text-interview.

Further Readings

The Human...The Home - Abdul Qader Al Rais, Catalogue Raisonne ©2005 Al Owais Cultural Foundation, Dubai

The Colours of My Life, Abdul Qader Al Rais, Dubai Cultural Council, ISBN 978-1-86063-234-1, February 2008

Abdul Qader Al Rais, Catalogue Raisonne ©2008, Hewar Art Gallery, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia