Dia al-Azzawi

Abstract

Dia al-Azzawi belongs to a generation of artists and intellectuals who were galvanised in their youth by the politics of Arab nationalism but crushed by the violence of dictatorship brought about by politics. His practice developed in response to that violence, becoming in the 1970s a witness to the various forms of oppression that broke out across the Arab world. In the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the violence it unleashed, al-Azzawi has renewed his practice of bearing witness in art. Since the 1960s, his art has consistently been characterised by a particular way of working between text and image, one that generated a signature mode of figuration and gave rise to a specific art form, the art book, which he would come to call the daftar/dafatir or notebook. He has worked in various media, including oil, acrylic, sculpture, and different techniques of printmaking. Over the years, al-Azzawi has also published numerous articles in magazines, newspapers, and journals, and has curated several regional and international exhibitions.

Biography

Dia al-Azzawi was introduced to the arts by his older brother Majeed who was involved in the theatre. Al-Azzawi possessed a natural inclination to draw, often reproducing illustrations from magazines or sketching scenes of family life as a child. He was encouraged by his teacher, Ibrahim, to develop his talents. After being expelled for participating in demonstrations supporting Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956, those talents helped him get reinstated in school.

After graduating from al-Markaziyyah high school in 1958, al-Azzawi enrolled in the College of Arts, Baghdad, where he studied archaeology, graduating in 1962. At the College of Arts, al-Azzawi came into the orbit of al-Marsam al-Hurr (The Free Atelier) held by the artist Hafidh al-Droubi, which included such poets as Muzaffar al-Nawab, artists like Tariq Mathlum, and the theatre director Abdallah Hubba. Al-Droubi encouraged al-Azzawi to continue studying art by enrolling in night classes at the Institute of Fine Art, which he finished in 1964. Following the general tendency in the fifties for artists to organise into groups, al-Droubi had formed the Impressionist Group, which al-Azzawi joined, even though the work he was doing was closer to that of the Baghdad Group for Modern Art, formed by the artist Jewad Selim.

While still in al-Markaziyyah high school, al-Azzawi had sought out art books in the libraries of the British Council and the United States Information Agency, as well as issues of the art magazine Studio International sold at one of the bookstores in Baghdad. Because the Institute of Fine Arts lacked a library, and his exposure to art there was limited to figure drawing and a truncated version of the history of European art, reproduced in black-and-white photographs, al-Azzawi sought out objects from the Iraq Museum (al-Mathaf al-Iraqi) that he knew from his studies of archaeology. Still, he viewed these objects less as artefacts of an ancient civilisation than as works in a history of art of which, however discontinuous, his practice was the most recent iteration. Notably, he worked with the Sumerian figurine, deriving from its tubular body and wide, hollow eyes centred in the face; a model for the human form that would persist throughout his work. The significant effect of this art history on his developing practice however, was that it expanded his sense of the field of possible forms he could work with, opening his eyes to the expressive possibilities of popular culture. In his early paintings, al-Azzawi drew on visual motifs found in everyday life, the shrine as a site of social activity, and legends such as those of Gilgamesh and Imam Hussein. Although motifs from rugs and talismans would persist for years in his work, it was his early interest in legends (asateer) that shaped his future work, bringing his practice increasingly into relation with text.

For al-Azzawi, legends belonged to a larger body of what was coming to be called ‘popular literature’ (al-adab al-sha'biyyah), or folklore. This body of stories offered an archive of narrative or figurative concepts that could be developed as a means of expressing the experience of contemporary life.  The violence and political instability that followed the first Ba'th coup in 1963 had left Iraq scarred and confronted with the experience of what he often referred to as ‘tragedy’ (al-masaa). For al-Azzawi, the figure of the martyr as a witness to injustice, in its different literary formulations, whether in the story of the martyrdom of Hussein or the Epic of Gilgamesh, provided a means of expressing the pathos of that experience. The figure of the martyr was not the only literary figure al-Azzawi worked with in this way; he also produced several paintings based on tales from One Thousand and One Nights. In both cases, the point was not to illustrate the story but the theme or concept that the story sought to express.

The relation to narrative initiated by his work with legends developed in the late sixties and early seventies into a relation with poetry in particular, beginning with his illustrations of Muzaffar al-Nawab's collection of poetry in 1968, Lil-rayl wa-Hamad. As al-Azzawi worked more with poetry, his drawings and paintings became increasingly hermetic, inviting but resisting interpretation.

In 1969, al-Azzawi's method of working with history, as an archive of formulae for giving form to contemporary life, was explicitly articulated in a manifesto titled "The New Vision." Written by al-Azzawi and signed by five artists—Rafa Nasiri, Mohamed Muhraddin, Ismail Fattah, Hashim Samerchi, and Saleh al-Jumaie—the manifesto was part of a broad cultural response to the defeat of the Arab states by Israel in the Six-Day War of 1967. It outlined a new relationship between art and politics, in which the artwork functioned as a site for speaking truth in conditions of untruth. This relation of art to politics would be borne out in several initiatives al-Azzawi organised over the next ten years, such as the Second Arab Art Biennial in Rabat on the theme of Palestine (1976), the Baghdad International Poster Exhibition (1979), and the Third World Biennial of Graphic Art (1980).

With the ascendancy of the Palestinian liberation movement after 1967, al-Azzawi's work came to engage contemporary political events more directly.  Whereas he had previously drawn on literary narratives, he now drew on historical texts, such as a journal kept by a fida'ee, or freedom fighter, during the siege of the Jebel Hussein refugee camp in Amman in 1970, or the short stories of Ghassan Kanafani that described the experience of Palestinian statelessness and the emergence of the fida'ee out of that experience during the 1950s and 1960s. al-Azzawi published two collections of drawings based on these texts: one in an art book, A Witness of Our Times: the Journal of a Fida'ee Killed in the Jordan Massacre of 1970 (1972) and the other, entitled Drawings from the Land of Sad Oranges (1973), in the second volume of the collected works of Kanafani which were published after he was assassinated in Beirut. Some of these drawings were developed into complete paintings, such as Figure of Sorrow (1972), in the collection of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar. However, the forms of struggle and restraint developed in the drawings provided the basis for a series of paintings entitled Human States (1974), which al-Azzawi produced in response to the war fought by the Iraqi government against the Kurdish population in the north of the country in 1974 –1975.

In 1975, al-Azzawi left Iraq for the first time to participate in a summer printmaking studio in Salzburg, Austria. The trip opened his eyes to how important it was for him to leave Iraq, both to expand his practice and to be able to work with an independence which the Ba'athist state was increasingly denying its citizens. In 1976, al-Azzawi moved to London, where he furthered his knowledge of printmaking and developed what he would call al-qaseedah al-marsumah, or the "drawn poem"—a drawing that is not an illustration of a poem but a visual extension of its linguistic dimensions. This form of the visual poem was first realised in an edition of prints on the pre-Islamic poetry of The Seven Odes (Al-Mu'allaqaat al-Saba). In 1979, al-Azzawi employed the new form of the qaseeda marsumah to produce a series of drawings based on poems written by Mahmoud Darwish, Yusuf al-Sayigh and Tahar Ben Jelloun in response to the massacre of Palestinians at the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp in Beirut three years earlier. After the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut in 1982, al-Azzawi produced another series of large prints, based on a text by Jean Genet, Quatre heures à Chatila, as well as a mural that remained at the National Center for Art and Culture in Kuwait, where it was first exhibited, until 2012, when it was transferred to the Tate Modern Museum in London.

The period of politically-engaged work that began after 1967 ended with the massacre of the refugees at Sabra and Shatila. After 1983, many of the formal elements that had evolved in his work over the previous decade began to follow a logic of their own, leading to a particular rule of colour, evident in a shift from oil paint to acrylic. Al-Azzawi had been noted for the remarkable colour of his paintings when he first began to exhibit his work in Baghdad in the early 1960s, and in the 1980s, he returned to colour in a variety of forms. These forms included the form of the Arabic letter, which al-Azzawi quickly abandoned once it aroused the predations of the art market; a peculiar kind of sculptural object, in which painting and sculpture were collapsed into each other; a return to literature such as The Epic of Gilgamesh and One Thousand and One Nights but this time in the form of prints and without the allegorical inscrutability of the paintings of the 1960s; and especially, beginning in 1989, in what al-Azzawi called dafatir (sing. daftar, notebook), a kind of art book that sought to generate visual forms for the poetry of the great Arab poets, from al-Mutanabbi to Jawahiri and Adonis. Al-Azzawi would produce over 40 dafatir, and when the Gulf War broke out in 1991 and the Iraq Museum was looted in 2003, the collection of notebooks provided a means of reflecting on those events.

Based on the premise that poetry, at least today, is something read rather than heard, and that it thus possesses an essential visual component, the notebooks focused on transforming the relation between the words of a poem and the space on the page in which they appear. In particular, this transformation entailed the use of colour to create a surface upon which the poem could be brought out of its residence in language and where it could find a visual form that would locate it in everyday life. In addition to the notebooks, throughout the 1990s, he produced several paintings that interpreted works of Arabic literature.

In the wake of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, and in reaction to the violence it unleashed, al-Azzawi's work has become a reflection on the country he left decades earlier. This reflection has taken the form of epic-size paintings, sculpture and installations. These works renew the form of witnessing that characterised his earlier practice in the 1960s and 1970s.

From 1968 to 1976, al-Azzawi served as the director of the Iraqi Antiquities Department in Baghdad.  From 1977 to 1980, he worked as artistic director of the Iraqi Cultural Centre in London, where he arranged several exhibitions, including Contemporary Arab Graphic Art (1978), The Baghdad International Poster Exhibition (1979), the Third World Biennial of Graphic Art (1980), The Influence of Calligraphy on Contemporary Arab Art (1980) and the three-part Contemporary Arab Artists (1978, 1979 & 1983). He also worked as editor of the magazines Ur (1978–1984) and Funoon Arabiyyah (1981–1982). Between 1988 and 1994, he was a member of the editorial board of the journal Mawakif.

In 2010, al-Azzawi curated My Homeland at Art Sawa in Dubai, an exhibition featuring work by artists who, at different times, had been forced to leave Iraq in response to the devastation that followed the American invasion. In 2010 - 2011, al-Azzawi, in collaboration with Charles Pocock, curated the five-part Art in Iraq Today at Meem Gallery in Dubai. Taking its name from the title of an essay written by the critic Jabra Ibrahim Jabra in 1961, the exhibition aimed to establish a dialogue between the work of Iraqi artists from different generations and residing in various countries.

Selected Writings

Lawn Yajma' al-Basar: Nusus wa Hiwarat fi al-Fann al-Tashkili [Color Brings Together Vision: Articles and Dialogues in the Visual Arts]. London: Touch Edition, 2001.

"Arab Graphic Art." Ur Magazine (London), no. 2 (November- December 1978): 47 - 55.

"Poetry, a Visual Text." Mawakif (London), no. 72 (Summer 1992):134-37.

Fann al-mulsaqat fi al-'Iraq:  dirasah fi bidayatuhu wa-tatawwuruh, 1939-1973 [The Art of the Poster in Iraq:  a study of its beginning and development]. Baghdad: Ministry of Information, 1974.

"Manifesto: Toward a New Vision" (1969) In Al-Bayanat al-Fanniyyah fi al-Iraq [Art Manifestos in Iraq], ed. Shakir Hassan Al Said. Baghdad: Ministry of Information, 1973.

"Al-Fanan Amam al-Tajruba fi Hudud al-Lawha" [The Artist Facing the Experience within the Boundaries of a Painting]. Al-Muthaqaf al-Arabi (Baghdad), no. 4 (1971): 178-185.

"Al-Shi'ir wa al-Insan: Fi al-asatir al-sumuriyya wa al-babiliyya" [Poetry and Man:  On Sumerian and Babylonian Legends], Al-Amilun fi al-Naft 81 (December, 1968), 2-6.

Bibliography

Dia Al-Azzawi. "Biographie" in Dia Azzawi: Exposition organisée par l'Institut du Monde Arabe avec la collaboration du Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar. (Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe, 2001), 71 - 91. [Though unsigned, the biography is written by Azzawi himself].

––––. "Al-Shi'ir wa al-Insan: fi al-asatir al-sumuriyya wa al-babiliyya" [Poetry and Man: On Sumerian and Babylonian Legends], Al-Amilun fi al-Naft 81 (December, 1968), 2 - 6.

"Hadith Akhir: Dhiya al-Azzawi Halaqah 6" [Interview with Ricardo Karam on December 14, 2012] YouTube video, 52:08, posted by Alsumaria. Accessed May 12, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s24dVRpNvo.

Al-Nawab, Muzafar and Dia Azzawi. "Fi Mu'aridh Dhiya al-Azzawi fi Galeri Wahid: muqabala bayna Dhiya al-Azzawi wa Muzafar al-Nawab" [At the Exhibition of Dia Azzawi at Gallery One: an interview between Dia Azzawi and Muzaffar al-Nawab] al-'Ulum, Vol 14, No 5, 1969, 62-64.

Al Said, Shakir Hassan. Fusul min Tarikh al-Fann al-Tashkili fil al-'Iraq [Chapters from the History of the Visual Art Movement in Iraq]. Volume Two. Baghdad: Ministry of Culture and Information, 1988.

––––."Manifesto: Toward a New Vision" (1969) In Al-Bayanat al-Fanniyyah fi al-Iraq [Art Manifestos in Iraq], ed. Shakir Hassan Al Said. Baghdad: Ministry of Information, 1973.

Shabout, Nada.  Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics. Florida: University Press Florida, 2007.

Further Reading

Abdel-rahim, Kamel. "Lawhat wa Qasa'id Tukhlid Tal Al-Za'ter" [Paintings and Poetry Immortalize Tal Al-Za'ter]. Ad-Dastour Magazine (London) no. 511 (March 1981): 56-57.

Abdul Kadim, Abbas. "Halat Dia al-Azzawi al-insaniyya" [On Dia's Human States]. Tariq El-Sha'ab (Baghdad, 19 March 1975): 10.

——. "Maradh Mushtarak Lil-grafik" [Joint Graphic Exhibition]. Tariq El-Sha'ab (Baghdad, 26 December 1975): 10.

Ali, Maureen. "Painting and Poetry." Gilgamesh: A Journal of Modern Iraqi Arts (Baghdad), no.4 (1998): 15.

Al-Ali, Salah. "Almualqat al-Saba'a Katbha Aljahilioun," (The Seven Golden Odes by Pre-Islamic Arab Poets, Illustrated by a Contemporary Iraqi Painter). Ad-Dastour Magazine (London, 31 August 1981): 72-73.

Arrajol Magazine. "Tajrubat al-Fanan Dia Al-Azzawi fi al-Gharb" [Azzawi's Experience in the West]. (London), no.167 (March 2007): 54 - 58.

Al-Azzawi, Dia et al. Dia Azzawi: Retrospective. Dubai:  Meem Gallery Editions, 2009.

––––. Art in Iraq Today.  Milano:  Skira, 2011.

Bietar, Mudi. "Interview with Dia Al-Azzawi: Visualization Extends Beyond the Border of the Painting to the Book and Furniture." Al-Wasat Magazine (London), no.43 (November 1992): 54 - 56.

Bin Boshti, El-Zuber. "Al Thakira al-Jamuiya fi Thiyab Muassara" [Collective Memory in a Form of Contemporary Presentation]. Al-Hayat (London, 13 December 1991): 20.

Dagher, Charbel. "Dia Al-Azzawi: Art Does Not Correspond with Official Statements." Kul al-Arab (Paris), no. 4 (April 1994): 50 - 53.

Faik, Salah. "Al-Kalimah al-Arabia Sorrh qbil Kol Shai'a" [The Arabic Word is Essentially a Picture].  Ad-Dastour Magazine (London), no. 391 (March 1985): 70 - 71.

Farah, Basim. "Al-Mu'alaqat al-sab'a: madi jamil" [The Seven Mu'allaqats: A Beautiful Past]. Al-Majalla Magazine (London), no. 16 (May 1980): 53 - 58.

Funoon Magazine. "Interview with Dia Al-Azzawi." (Baghdad), no. 23 (1979): 32 - 36.

Ghanim, Zuhir. "Dia Azzawi yarsim qasa'id al-Shua'ra" [Dia Azzawi Draws the Poetry of the Poets]. Funoon Magazine (Baghdad, January 1992): 32 - 35.

Al-Hage, Badr. "Tall Al-Za'ter fi Thakirati al-Khatt wa al-Loun" [Tal Al-Za'ter, In Memory of Line and Color] Al-Watan Al-Arabi  Magazine (Paris), no. 148 (December 1979): 62 -63.

Al-Haidari, Buland. "Malameh min Ather al-Turath al-Arabi fi Fananina" [Traces of Influence from Arab Culture on our Artists]. Afaq Arabia Magazine (Baghdad), no.7 (March 1977): 56 - 69.

Kamil, Adel. Al-fann al-Tashkili al-Mu 'assir fi al-Iraq: Marhalat al-Sitinat [Contemporary Plastic Arts in Iraq: The Sixties Period]. Baghdad: Dar Al- Huriyah Lil Taba'a, 1986.

Al-Khouri, Idriss. "Interview with Dia Al-Azzawi." Al-Alam, (Rabat, 9 September 1975): 10.

Laibi, Shakir. "Monographie" in Dia Azzawi: Exposition organisée par l'Institut du monde arabe avec la collaboration du Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar. (Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe, 2001), 71 - 91.

Muzaffar, May. "Modern Iraqi Artists and Poetry." Gilgamesh: A Journal of Modern Iraqi Arts, (Baghdad), no. 1 (1988): 13 - 17.

——. "Calligraphy in Modern Iraqi Art." Gilgamesh: A Journal of Modern Iraqi Arts, (Baghdad), no. 1 (1988): 7 - 11.

Nader, Suhail Sami. "Al-Tajruba wa Al-thaqafa wa hurriyyat Al-ta'bir" [Experience, Culture and Freedom of Expression]. Al-Jumhuriyyia (Baghdad, 22 March 1975): 6.

Al-Nasiri, Rafa. "Interview with Dia Al-Azzawi." Thaqafat Magazine (Manama), no.1 (2002): 157 - 167.

Nouri, Shakir. "Hakatha Atamal ma al-turath" [This is How I Handle Heritage]. Al-Watan Al-Arabi Magazine (Paris, 28 June 1980): 60 - 63.

——. "Dia al-Azzawi: Al-Qima al-Ibda'iyah lil Khatt" (Dia al-Azzawi: the Creative Value of Script). Interview with Dia Al-Azzawi. Afaq Arabia Magazine (Baghdad, 1986): 74 - 78.

—— . Interview with Dia Al-Azzawi: Part 1. Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London, 29 October 2001): 11.

——. Interview with Dia Al-Azzawi: Part 2. Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London, 30 October. 2001): 11.

Orabi, As'ad. "Bayna Al-thakira al-mathafiyya wa al-waq'iyya al-hay" [Between Museum Memory and Living Reality]. Al-Youm El-Sabia (Paris, 4 June 1990):  36 - 37.

——. "Al-Mustahadith wa al-Mawrouth" [The Modern and the Inherited]. Mawakif (London), no. 67 (Spring 1992): 141 - 148.

Al-Rawi, Nuri. "Al-Faris wa al-Dahia" [The Knight and the Victim]. Al-Amilun Fi Al-Nafit Magazine (Baghdad), no. 66 (September 1966): 10 - 14.

Shabout, Nada. Interventions: A Dialogue between the Modern and the Contemporary. Milan: Skira, 2010.

——. Dafatir. Contemporary Iraqi Book Art. Texas: University of North Texas, 2006.

Shrieh, Mahmoud. "Interview with Dia Al-Azzawi." Al-Nahar (Beirut, 29 November 1984): 15.

Sultan, Maha. "Interview with Dia Al-Azzawi." Al-Hayat (London, 13 December 1991): 16.

Uthman, Khalid Mohammed. "Tanawuaat Muthhelah Li-'eqa'a al-Mathabeh" (Amazing Variations on the Rhythm of Massacres). Al-Watan (Kuwait, 17 November 1983): 11.

Yousif, Farouq. "Dia al-Azzawi: Total Dedication to Painting." Gilgamesh: A Journal of Modern Iraqi Arts (Baghdad), no. 4 (1988): 7 - 14.

Al-Zibawi, Mahmoud. "Al-Lughah al-Tashkiliyyah al-Arabiyah: Al-That, Al-Akhar, Al-Hawiyah" [The Language of Arab Plastic Arts: Self, Other, Identity]. Mawakif (London), no. 64 (Summer 1991): 74 - 88.

——.'Sharq al-Hadatha' (The East of Modernity). Mawakif (London), no. 67 (Spring 1992): 154 - 160.

Al-Zkari, Shafiq. "Hawal al-ilaqa bayna al-Nass al-Shari wal fann al-Tashkili" [On the Relationship between Poetic Text and Visual Art]. Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London), no. 1668 (September 1994): 11.