Faiq Hassan

Abstract

Faiq Hassan was born in July 1914 in​ Baghdad, Iraq. Hassan studied art at the l'Académie des Beaux-Arts on a government-funded scholarship. After receiving his degree, the artist returned to Iraq and became the director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad. In 1950, Hassan founded the group Al-Ruwad (Pioneers), which initially operated under the name Société Primitive. In 1967, Faiq Hassan formed another art group known as Al-Zawiya (the Angle). Hassan worked in various styles ranging from acute realism to soft impressionism to angular abstraction. He worked primarily in oil and was a master of colour theory. He is best known for his representations of the Iraqi working class and Arab horse riders. Hassan's works are in collections like Mathaf: Ar​​ab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar and the Jordanian National Gallery of Fine Arts. Hassan died in January 1992 in Paris, France.​

Biography​​

Faiq Hassan is often referred to as the father of Iraqi modern art. During his artistic career, he assumed various roles within the burgeoning Iraqi art scene, including educator and founder. In the crucial decades of the 1940s and 1950s, Hassan was devoted to creating an art form that would express the growing feelings of national pride among Iraqi citizens. He was also interested in developing his own technical skills and those of his students. In later decades, Hassan would remain a leading artist in Iraq, and his artistic legacy continues to be a powerful influence.

Born in Baghdad in 1914, Hassan remembers his childhood as a series of art experiments, as he would master one medium and move on to the next. A typical experiment involved sculpting mud from the Tigris River into the shapes of horses and people. He did not consider himself bright in the traditional sense, as he neglected his schoolwork. His talent for art-making, however, developed with ease, and he was encouraged by his teachers. One teacher in particular, the artist Muhammad Khidir, became Hassan's mentor and artistic example. He considered Khidir a master of colour subtleties, whose work would later point the way for Hassan's own investigations into colour theory.

Hassan's artistic aptitude was recognised in 1933 when he became the second recipient of a government-funded scholarship to study art in Europe. He travelled to France and enrolled at the Ècole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. In Paris, Hassan had a fairly traditional education in the arts. He participated in art history and studio classes, completing art projects that involved copying master works. Hassan was also introduced to significant figures of European modernism. He was especially impressed with artists like Matisse and Delacroix, paying specific attention to their use of colour. Like many art students, Hassan spent his years in Paris synthesising aspects of his education and life experiences into a workable artistic practice. Thus, these were days of exploration and a growing awareness of the international art scene.

Hassan returned to Baghdad after receiving his degree in 1938. Soon after, he accepted a position at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad as the director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture. During his tenure at the institute, which continued until 1962, Hassan introduced courses based on Western painting techniques, as well as classes for the study of Islamic and Arab folk arts, like pottery and metalwork. He also went to great lengths to develop the efficacy of the department by training future teachers and procuring basic art supplies and gypsum models. In conjunction with his job as an administrator, Hassan was an involved teacher. He taught courses on colour theory, perspective, anatomy, and design, as well as classes in art history. He encouraged his students to draw inspiration from their local surroundings while honing their technical skills. Hassan took student development as a personal responsibility and made it his duty to oversee the first generation of artists to graduate from the institute. Over the next decade, the institute became the centre of artistic activity, and Hassan's reputation as a leading figure in Iraqi art education was firmly established.

Coupled with his work as an educator, Hassan participated in numerous art groups that brought artists together in collective interaction and exhibition, including the Society of the Friends of Art. In 1950, Hassan founded the group Al-Ruwad, or the Pioneers, which began under the name Société Primitive. The group began as a loose association of artists who took trips to the outskirts of Baghdad to explore life beyond the cosmopolitan city centre. The Pioneers did not publish a group manifesto. Still, there was a shared desire amongst the participants to shed the confines of the artist studio and paint directly from the surrounding environment. The group exhibited in a private home until the National Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad was established in 1962. In 1967, Faiq Hassan formed another art group known as Az-Zawiya, or the Angle. Initiated as a reaction to the Arab-Israeli June War, the group had a powerful message informed by the political and nationalistic aims that art making could advance. Ultimately, this collective was short-lived, having exhibited only once. However, the group was composed of influential artists, including Ismail Fattah (1934–2004), Mohammed Ghani Hikmet (1929–2011), and Kadhim Hayder (1932–1985). Hassan's own artistic practice was marked by technical skill and variation. Throughout his career, he experimented with various art styles and has been labelled a primitivist, an impressionist, and a cubist. These distinctions are up for debate, but what is certain is that Hassan had an expert acuteness for artistic techniques that his students and colleagues acknowledged. Specifically, Hassan was a master of colour. He took great pride in his chemical knowledge of each pigment and in experimenting with their compositions. He even remarked that a good painter possessed a complex understanding of colour technology. Colour to Hassan was not a symbol in and of itself but was the connective tissue that drew the composition together.

Despite Hassan's technical prowess, he asserted that technique was not the ultimate aim of his artistic production. To him, technique was merely a means of expression. The true essence of Hassan's work lay in his ability to capture the spirit of everyday Iraqi life. Indeed, his subject matter was taken from the environs of Iraq. Villagers, workers, horse riders, and landscapes dominate his oeuvre, which is depicted with an emotive delicateness, regardless of the style. Hassan's most famous works of Arab Horsemen were executed with fervently rough brushstrokes, creating a dynamic and, oftentimes, romantic rendering of their subjects. A majority of Hassan's earlier works, however, were abstract and linear in nature. During his career, Hassan also showed a penchant for realism with his portraits of Kurdish men and Arab Bedouins. Through these works, Hassan demonstrates the range of his artistic ability, as well as his dedication to recording a sense of "Iraqiness" that was consistent with the nationalist sentiments of his time.

Due to his incredible talent as a painter and his dedication to education, Hassan is remembered today as "the master" or "the teacher." Indeed, he played a significant role in the development of Iraqi modern art, and his importance cannot be overstated.

Bibliography

Al-Azzawi, Abd al-Raheem. "The Pioneers," in Modern Art Iraq Archive, Item #769. A​ccessed October 19, 2011.​ http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/769.

Al-Haidari, Buland. "Jawad Salim and Faiq Hassan and the Birth of Modern Art in Iraq." In Modern Art Iraq Archive, item 170. Accessed September 2, 2011.​ http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/170.

Ali, Wijdan. Modern Islamic Art: Development and Continuity. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1997.

Al-Rabai, Shawkat. "Faiq Hassan," in Modern Art Iraq Archive, Item #171. Accessed October 19, 2011.​ http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/171.

Al-Rawi, Nouri. "Faiq Hassan," in Modern Art Iraq Archive, Item #192.Accessed October 19, 2011. ​http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/192.

____________."Faiq Hassan," in Modern Art Iraq Archive, Item #80. Accessed October 19, 2011.​ http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/80.

"Baghdad Exhibition (1957)" in Modern Art Iraq Archive, Item # 9. Accessed September 2, 2011.​ http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/9.

Bahrani, Zainab, and Nada Shabout. Modernism and Iraq. New York: Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University Press, 2009.

El-Husri, Khaldun. "The Wanderer: A Study of Modern Iraqi Painting" Middle East Forum 4 ​(1958), 23-27. Accessed September 2, 2011.​ http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/184.

Eigner, Saeb. Art of the Middle East: Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World and Iran. New York: Merrell, 2010.

"Exhibition of Permanent Collection of Paintings and Drawings Made in Iraq" in Modern Art Iraq Archive, Item #19. Accessed September 2, 2011.​ http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/19.

"Faiq Hassan." meemartgallery.com. Last modified January 2014. http://www.meemartgallery.com/art_exhibiting.php?id=58

Faraj, Maysaloun, ed. Strokes of genius: Contemporary Iraqi art. London: Saqi Books, 2001.

Inati, Shams C, ed. Iraq: Its History, People, and Politics. New York: Humanity Books, 2003.

Jabra, Jabra I. The Grass Roots of Iraqi Art. Jersey: Wasit Graphic and Publishing Limited, 1983.

Mudaffar, May. "Iraq." In Contemporary Art from the Islamic World. Edited by Wijdan Ali. Amman: The Royal Society of Fine Arts, Essex, England: Scorpion Publishing, 1989. 159-174.

Saad, Qassim. "Contemporary Iraqi Art: Origins and Development." Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Art & Design, 2008) 3, 50-54.

Sabri, Atta. "Third Annual Exhibition of the Pioneer," in Modern Art Iraq Archive, Item #219. Accessed October 19, 2011.​ http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/219.

Further Reading

Bernhardsson, Magnus T. "Visions of Iraq: Modernizing the Past in 1950s Baghdad." In Modernism and the Middle East: Architecture and Politics in the Twentieth Century.​ Edited by Sandy Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008, 81-95.

_____. "Faith in the Future: Nostalgic Nationalism and 1950s Baghdad," History Compass 9:10 (2011), 802-817.

_____. "The Sense of Belonging: The Politics of Archaeology in Modern Iraq." In Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts. Edited by Philip L. Kohl, Mara Kozelsky, and Nachman Ben Yehuda. Chicago: University Press, 2007.

Davis, Eric. Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

_____. "The Historical Genesis of the Public Sphere in Iraq, 1900-1963: Implications for Building Democracy in the Post-Ba'thist Era." In Publics, Politics, and Participation: Locating the Public Sphere in the Middle East and North Africa. Edited by Seteney Shami. New York: Social Science Research Council, 2009.

_____.  "The Museum and the Politics of Social Control in Modern Iraq." In Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity. Edited by John R. Gillis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Dawisha, Adeed. Iraq: A Political History from Independence to Occupation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Eppel, Michael.  "The Elite, the Efendiyya, and the Growth of Nationalism and Pan-Arabism in Hashemite Iraq, 1921-1958" International Journal of Middle East Studies 30 (1998), 227-250.

"Les Art l'Iran: L'Ancienne Perse et Bagdad (Exhibition at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, 1938)" in Modern Art Iraq Archive, Item #533. Accessed February 7, 2012. http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/533.

Merzaban, Daliah, ed. Re:Orient: Investigating Modernism in the Arab World 1950s-'70s. United Arab Emirates: Barjeel Art Foundation, 2013.

"Modern Art Iraq Archive." Artiraq.org. Last modified January 2014. http://artiraq.org/maia/.

Naef, Silvia. "Reexploring Islamic Art: Modern and Contemporary Creation in the Arab World and Its Relation to the Artistic Past." RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 43 (2003), 164-174.

Neame, Alan. "Modern Painting in Iraq" The Studio 754 (1956), 1-7. Accessed September 2, 2011.​ http://artiraq.org/maia/items/show/498

Pocock, Charles. Modern Iraqi Art: A Collection. Dubai: Meem Gallery, 2013.

Romaya, Bassam, "Iraq and the Question of Aesthetics." International Congress of Aesthetics (​2007), 1-15.

Shabout, Nada. Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art. Exhibition Catalogue. Doha: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar Museum Authority, 2010.

___________. Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics. Gainesville: University of  Florida Press, 2007.

___________. "Collecting Modern Iraqi Art." In Archives, Museums, and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World. Edited by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and John Pedro Schwartz. London: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012.

___________. "Historiographic Invisibilities." International Journal of The Humanities 3, no. 9 (May 2006): 53-64.

Simon, Reeva Spector and Eleanor H. Tejirian, eds. The Creation of Iraq, 1914-1921. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.​