Fuad al-Futaih

Abstract

Fuad al-Futaih (1948–2018) was a Yemeni painter, printmaker, sculptor, and one of the pioneering figures of modern visual art in Yemen. Born in Qadas, Taez governorate, he studied English literature in Egypt and economics and political science in Iraq before joining the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf, in what was then the Federal Republic of Germany. He began a PhD in art history at the University of Cologne before returning to Yemen, where he served as head of the Fine Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture during the time of the Yemen Arab Republic. He played a foundational role in establishing art infrastructures in Sana’a, founding Gallery No. 1, the city’s first commercial art gallery in 1986, the National Art Centre at the Samsarat al-Mansourah in 1992, and the Bab al-Yemen Gallery in the 2000s. His work, rich in Yemeni imagery, drew inspiration from landscapes, architecture, ancient history, and everyday people, with the female figure a central and recurring presence in drawings, etchings, and paintings. Over a cosmopolitan life and career marked by a sustained commitment to promoting art in Yemen, al-Futaih also exhibited throughout Europe, the Arab world, North America, and Oceania. His works are included in major public and private collections worldwide, including the British Museum, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Barjeel Art Foundation. He is counted among the founding generation of Yemeni modern artists, alongside contemporaries such as Hashem ‘Ali (1945–2009), Abd al-Jalil al-Sururi (1948–2011) and Abd al-Jabar Nu’man (1948–2019).

Biography

Early life and education

Fuad al-Futaih was born in 1948 in Qadas, in the Huggeriah district of Taiz governorate of what was then the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen; under the Zaydi Imamate, a Shia religious monarchy first established in Sa’ada in 897 by Yahya ibn al-Husayn and re-established under the Hamid al-Din dynasty in 1891. He was born to a Somali mother from a region bordering Ethiopia, who traded fabrics and clothing in Aden, and to a father who held a prominent position in several respects—his name was associated with one of the first pharmacies in Taiz, at a time when access to medicine and pharmaceutics was limited, and he served as director of customs in Mocha, a position that his family described as one that reflected the competence, trust, and high social status he enjoyed under the first republican government of North Yemen (1962–1967). As family accounts recall, al-Futaih’s father owned a large car, considered a rare sign of luxury in those days, and had a villa in the village, indicating both his financial comfort and his ability to balance urban life with the authenticity of rural roots. This privileged background afforded al-Futaih access to education and cultural opportunities during his formative years abroad and in the various independent Yemeni states that existed before and after unification.

When he was four years old, his family relocated to the port city of Aden, then under British colonial administration (1839–1967). Of those years, one of his sisters recalled that he was always sitting on the roof drawing whatever he saw. From an early age, al-Futaih showed a passion for drawing, reproducing artworks he came across in art books from local bookshops and a mobile library, and unlike the state in which he was born—where the Imamate had banned visual representations and music—his interest was not prohibited in Aden, which had possessed an art scene since the 1930s and 1940s, centred around clubs that held exhibitions and, from the 1950s, art associations.

Al-Futaih received his preparatory certificate in 1961 and, in 1962, obtained a scholarship to travel to Egypt, where he completed his secondary schooling at the Saidiyya School before enrolling at Cairo University in 1965 to study English Literature. His years in Cairo—a city shaped by the Pan-Arab and Pan-African political imagination—exposed him to places such as Café Riche, where he encountered writers and journalists, listened to lectures by novelists including Naguib Mahfouz, and remained interested in Yemeni poetry and music. These years were also marked by political instability, and in 1967 al-Futaih returned to Aden as tensions escalated in Egypt in the run up to the Arab–Israeli war. In the same period, his home country was undergoing historical transformations: Sana’a had become the capital of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1962, while Aden became the capital of the newly established People’s Republic of South Yemen (PRSY) following the end of British colonial rule in 1967. Upon his return, al-Futaih learned by radio that he had been awarded a scholarship to study theatre in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). However, the scholarship had been given to another student by the time he was able to leave. He stayed in Aden and, for a period, worked for his father—who wanted him to study political science and become involved in politics—before receiving a government scholarship to study economics and political science at the University of Baghdad for the 1970/1971 academic year. Although he only stayed in Iraq for a year, al-Futaih recalled in a 1979 interview that it was in Baghdad that he recognised his true vocation lay in the arts: his long-standing passions—reading, drawing, and, since his teenage years, creating small sculptures of animals and birds—had never subsided. He requested a transfer to the Baghdad Academy of Fine Arts to specialise in theatre design but received no formal response. Unwilling to wait and compelled by what he described as an urgent need to pursue formal artistic training, he travelled to Europe without a fixed plan, eventually settling in West Germany.

In 1971, al-Futaih enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Academy of Fine Arts), specialising in printmaking and engraving. As part of his practical study programme, he worked as an assistant in theatrical set design at the Düsseldorf City Theatre, travelling between several neighbouring cities where the company performed. He also began doctoral research in art history at the University of Cologne, which he ultimately left unfinished.

This period in West Germany was also personally significant, as it was then that he met his future wife, Ilona Kline, a nursing student. In 1977, he married Kline, with whom he subsequently had three children: Nadim in 1978, Miriam in 1980, and Sarah in 1990.

Black and white period documenting Yemen 

During his years in Germany, al-Futaih worked primarily in black and white, building an image of Yemen peopled by figures that narrate the country’s urban and rural life as well as its ancient history. These figures create a harmonious pictorial space, where the use of black and white amplifies the intricate patterned fabrics worn by men and women across Yemen’s different regions. His work of this period also offered contrasting landscapes, both imagined and real—at times full of a sinuous rhythm and at others teeming with detailed shapes. He also increased his contact with European artists of various styles, and by 1973, he had gained recognition as a professional artist. He began representing the Yemen Arab Republic at international exhibitions and cultural events: he took part in the International Engraving Exhibition (Internationale Graphikausstellung) in Bonn and a general printmaking exhibition in West Germany; a solo show at the George Michel Gallery in Solingen; represented Yemen at Tübingen’s Arab Cultural Week in 1975; and participated in the 1976 International Engraving Biennial in Ljubljana, where, as Yemen’s representative, he received an honorary invitation to the opening ceremony. He also participated in the International Biennale of Art in San Francisco in 1973–1974 and, in 1975, won second prize in the international competition to design the logo for the International Year of Women in Germany.

During his years in Germany, he produced some of his most important paintings and drawings, a number of which were purchased by museums in Europe and in Arab countries. An example of one such work from this period is the 1975 etching entitled The Immigrant. Printed on board, this work depicts one of the many young Yemenis who left their country in the 1970s, a period that saw large migration flows into Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States as labour opportunities multiplied with the oil boom of 1973—when world oil prices quadrupled—bringing economic growth to the oil-producing countries of the Arabian Peninsula and generating a flow of remittances back to emigrants’ countries of origin. The other type of migration that took place in the same period was of the type al-Futaih was part of—students who migrated to study abroad thanks to scholarships (provided by both former North and South Yemen). These allowed young students like him to travel and return to Yemen with university degrees as well as to transfer ideas, cultural values, and new sets of expectations, among other remittances with a social impact. Al-Futaih’s etching retains the optimism of this period, featuring a line of Arabic from a Yemeni poem at the top of the artwork proclaiming that the protagonist will overcome whatever challenges he encounters on his path.

The migration movements of this period included both unexpected and planned returns to Yemen: unexpected for the labour migrants expelled from oil-producing states between 1990 and 1991—after Yemen sided with Saddam Hussein during Kuwait’s invasion—and voluntary for the university graduates who were offered employment to come back to Yemen. In 1980, al-Futaih was asked by the YAR's minister of culture to return to North Yemen to work with the ministry in Sana’a. He complied, relocating his family to Yemen; his ambition described in an interview published in 1979 in terms of broad hopes for the advancement of art in his homeland. Major transformations had happened since he had left. 

Building art infrastructures in North Yemen

Two different Yemeni states had been created in the 1960s, establishing distinct political projects. In the south, Yemenis struggled for independence against the British and, in 1967, established the only socialist/Marxist-Leninist republic in the Arabian Peninsula, the People’s Republic of South Yemen (1967–1970), which subsequently became the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (1970–1990). In the north, the Yemen Arab Republic’s 1962 revolution ended the reign of a religious monarchy that had coexisted with, and sometimes been occupied by, the Ottoman Empire—which withdrew its forces from Hodeidah and Sana’a in 1918–1919, ending its second occupation. These distinct political projects were depicted both by the artists who gathered at the clubs, associations, and cultural spaces in the south and those who met at the informal ateliers of the north. Few examples remain of their early creations made in the 1960s. Paintings and posters made in the 1980s, in both former North and South, retraced how art and politics intertwined to portray independent nation-states by including commemorating dates, political figures, and different sites of political memory.

Upon al-Futaih’s arrival in Sana’a, the capital of the more conservative North Yemen, he found no art education programmes or the varied art infrastructure developed over the decades in the South. Only painter Hashem ‘Ali (1945–2009)—considered by his peers as the “father of modern painting” in Yemen—had opened his own atelier in Taiz in the late 1960s, to work, exhibit, and informally teach painting. In Sana’a, such spaces did not exist until the 1980s. The state, however, gradually began to create employment opportunities for the artists who began returning to Yemen after years studying abroad—like al-Futaih, who had studied in Arab countries and Europe—or the majority who had studied in the USSR. Al-Futaih served as head of the Fine Arts Department at the Ministry of Culture in Sana’a from 1980 to 1987, using his position to encourage exhibitions at the local, regional, and international level. These years also coincided with his contribution to the Yemen Military Museum in Sana’a, which was inaugurated in 1984 and opened to the public in 1987. Within a context marked by the absence of art museums, the Military Museum played a crucial role by commissioning paintings before unification, illustrative of an official nationalism, and al-Futaih was among the artists commissioned to paint artworks portraying the 1962 Republic's political project. Among them were portraits of the martyrs (shuhada’) who had died for its establishment. These works, dated 1984, are part of what can be considered a collection of paintings made by artists from the pioneer generation during a period that saw official nationalism materialised through artistic practice.

The decade of the 1980s was also marked by al-Futaih’s involvement in building North Yemen’s art infrastructures, and by participating, through a collective approach, in Yemen’s “art worlds”, a concept that H. S. Becker developed in 1982 to define art as a collective, social, and cooperative activity rather than the act of a lone genius. One of al-Futaih’s most consequential contributions to his country’s “art worlds” was his role in establishing infrastructures for exhibiting and commercialising art. In 1986, he opened Gallery No. 1 in Sana’a, Yemen’s first commercial art gallery. He described his motivation in a 1986 interview as being linked to bringing works to the public rather than leaving them in storage, creating a sustainable market for Yemeni art, and providing a platform for young and emerging artists. Gallery No. 1 organised individual and group shows for Yemeni and foreign, local and international artists, inculcating a collective spirit among small groups of exhibiting artists. The gallery’s clientele was primarily Western expatriates and Yemeni officials who had encountered art abroad, but as al-Futaih noted in a piece published in 1987, ordinary Yemenis, “simple tribesmen with their jambia ”, also visited and responded to his drawings—“maybe more than the intellectuals who use complicated words but do not really understand my work”.

The context in which the gallery operated was not without its difficulties: it remained open only until 1991–1992, its economic viability possibly undermined by the absence of an independent art market and the political instability accompanying the 1990 unification. However, al-Futaih possessed the necessary resources and access to networks to navigate this fragile context, at least for a time. Although independently run and self-financed through al-Futaih’s personal efforts and by charging a small sales commission, the gallery was fully integrated into Yemen’s official cultural scene.

Although they faced similar difficulties, other art galleries were established in the 1980s, such as Colors Gallery in Sana’a, founded by Amin al-Nasher (1953–) and his brother, the Adeni Al-Ameen Gallery of the Soviet-trained painter Abdallah al-Amin (1954–), and Tawahi Gallery, founded later in the 1990s.

​​In 1992, al-Futaih founded and directed the National Art Centre at the Samsarat al-Mansourah, a three-storey caravanserai with around 30 small rooms, located in the old city of Sana’a. He later opened the Bab al-Yemen Gallery in the 2000s, also in the old city. Although initially both venues followed a similar logic—exhibiting and selling his own work and that of fellow artists to a largely tourist clientele and attracting an international` audience—the National Art Centre was a relatively different project. By 1997, al-Futaih ​​​​described it as a governmental organisation, marking a shift from the entirely self-funded model of Gallery No. 1, ​​while ​​Bab al-Yemen Gallery continued the self-organised financial model of his earlier organising efforts. The Centre ran a structured annual programme encompassing group and solo exhibitions, painting workshops for professional artists, children’s art workshops for school pupils, and symposia on traditional Yemeni crafts and calligraphy, in collaboration with German academics, the Women’s Centre of Old Sana’a, and the National Centre for Calligraphy.

Depicting a colourful Yemen

The late 1980s and 1990s marked a significant shift in al-Futaih’s artistic practice. After years centred on black and white, he turned emphatically to colour. This dramatic shift to colour is most evident in the female figure, a recurrent and dominant element in his work that often carries a social dimension—a means of documenting life through female dress and the coloured fabrics worn throughout the varied regions of Yemen. Another recurring element in his work is imagery—architectural motifs, figures, and animals—drawn from Yemeni scenery, daily life, history, and the country’s ancient cultural heritage. In an interview published in Al-Kifah al-Arabi in the late 1970s–early 1980s, al-Futaih articulated his central artistic tension as a desire to create work that avoided merely repeating Western schools or, conversely, retreated into a superficial folkloric idiom. This effort is also present in the dominant female figure in his work, which embodies at times sexuality and sensuality.

Throughout his career, al-Futaih worked primarily in printmaking and painting, with a sustained practice in etching, engraving, silkscreen, drawing, and works in copper and iron. He also worked across a wide range of other media, including lithography, sculpture, and book illustrations executed in oil on canvas, watercolour on paper, and oil on wood. He was the first contributor to a text on visual arts for the Yemeni Encyclopaedia, published by the Al-Afif Cultural Foundation. Beyond painting and printmaking, he contributed to a variety of applied and public art forms: he designed postage stamps, posters, medals, and logos, and executed monumental public commissions. Among the latter were a large industrial glass relief sculpture for a chemical company in Germany (c. 1975–1976) and the Strength and Peace sculpture carved in white stone that was erected in front of Sana’a International Airport. In addition, he designed several murals in Sana’a, most notably one depicting the principles of the Yemeni Revolution.

Visibility and recognition for modern art from Yemen

In the years prior to the 1990 Yemeni unification, al-Futaih became increasingly integrated into pan-Arab and international exhibition circuits. A formative encounter occurred in 1988 at an exhibition in Baghdad, where artists from North and South Yemen met for the first time, al-Futaih among them. This encounter later contributed to the formation in 1993 of the Union of Plastic Artists, of which he was a founding member. He was also a founding member of the Modern Art Group, active in Sana’a in the early 1990s, and of the Yemeni International Cultural Circle known as al-Halaqa (1996)which launched the Halaqa Journal in 1998.

Within a regional and international context where the various Yemeni art worlds continued to lack visibility and recognition, al-Futaih worked throughout the 1990s and 2000s to reach public audiences by exhibiting his artwork in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE, and the United States. In 2002, he participated in the Arab Pioneers Festival, organised by the Arab League in Cairo, and the following year he had a solo exhibition and received personal recognition from the Cairo International Graphic Triennial. Over the course of his career, h is work entered major public and private collections: Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha); the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts (Amman); the Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah); the Dalloul Art Foundation (Beirut); the Khalid Shoman Foundation – Darat al Funun (Amman); the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris); the San Francisco Museum;  the Museum of Contemporary Graphic Art (Norway); and university collections in Cologne, Tübingen, and Sana’a.

Late years in Aden

Al-Futaih ceased painting around 2012—when the Bab al-Yemen Gallery also closed—and relocated to Aden. By then Yemen had lived through contentious mobilisations, starting in 2011 and overthrowing former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2012 after 30 years in power. With the escalation of violence that ensued, Yemen entered into a civil war by the end of 2014. Following the Houthi takeover of Sana’a, the conflict intensified in 2015 with the entry into the conflict of a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia against the pro-Houthi forces. Al-Futaih passed away in Aden on 28 February 2018, at the age of 70, with his country still at war. His death was mourned as the loss of one of the pioneers and founders of fine art in Yemen. He was consistently identified as part of the pioneer generation (al-jîl al-ruwwad) of Yemeni modern art, alongside contemporaries such as self-taught painter Hashem ‘Ali (1945–2009), Abd al-Jalil al-Sururi (1948–2011) and Abd al-Jabar Nu’man (1948–2019), who were trained, respectively, in the USSR and Egypt. At his passing, his artistic standing had already been recognised through several awards, including the 1982 prize for Yemen’s national entry in the United Nations poster competition on Disarmament and Yemen’s National Award in Arts and Culture of 1989. His artistic legacy crucially includes the establishment of spaces for the creation, exhibition, and commercialisation of art, contributing to defining a generation’s relationship to professional artistic practice in the country.

Public and Private Collections

The artist’s work is in the collections of the British Museum in London and the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha. Regional holdings include the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, the Khalid Shoman Foundation – Darat al Funun, the Hindiyeh Museum and Gallery in Amman, and the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation in Beirut. In Europe, the work is held by the Institut du monde arabe and Galerie Claude Lemand in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Graphic Art in Norway, and the universities of Cologne and Marburg in Germany. Further international collections include the Indonesian National Gallery in Jakarta and the University of Sana’a in Yemen.

Bibliography

Abd al-Majid, Muhammad, “Al-Fannan Fuad al-Futaih wal-Huwiyya al-Arabiyya” [The Artist Fuad al-Futaih and Arab Identity], Al-Thawra, Baghdad, 7 May 1979.

Al-‘Ansi, Yasir, Al-taswir al-yemeni al-mu’asir min al-fitra 1962 hatta 2007 [Contemporary Yemeni Painting from 1962 to 2007], Master’s thesis, Department of Fine Arts and Philosophy, Alexandria University, 2009.

Al-Futaih, Fuad [interview], “Salat al-Funun al-Tashkiliyya al-Yamaniyya” [Yemeni Visual Art Galleries], 27 September newspaper, Sana’a, 6 December 1997.

Al-Futaih, Miriam (comp.), “Fuad Al-Futaih: A Chronology” (updated 2025), used by permission from Tijan M. Sallah from his forthcoming book titled Fuad Al-Futaih, Yemen’s Iconic Artist: His Life and Work.

Al-Futaih, Miriam, Document with questions, transmitted 18 March 2026.

Al-Qawi, Nasir, Al-fann al-tashkili fil-Yemen [Plastic Art in Yemen], al-munadhama al-‘arabiyya lil-tarbiyya wal-thaqafa wal-‘ulum, published by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Sana’a, 2005.

Al-Sindi, Abd al-Malik, “Iysal A’mal al-Fannan ila al-Nas” [Bringing the Artist’s Works to the People], [newspaper name not readable], 15 March 1986.

Alviso-Marino, Anahi, “Impact of Transnational Experiences. The Case of Yemeni Artists in the Soviet Union,” Arabian Humanities, 1, 2013. http://journals.openedition.org/arabianhumanities/2229; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/cy.2229

Alviso-Marino, Anahi, “The Military Museum Opens in Sana’a”, (Publisher TBA, forthcoming).

Author unknown, “Arabische Welt: Fuad Al-Futaih jetzt in der Ursus-Presse” [Arab World: Fuad Al-Futaih now at the Ursus-Presse Gallery], Düsseldorfer Nachrichten / Westdeutsche Zeitung, Nr. 162, 15 July 1978. [Author identified by initials M.M.]

Author unknown, “Curriculum Vitae of the Artist Fuad al-Futaih”, The Halaqa Journal, Vol. 1, Sana’a, 1998.

Author unknown, “Fuad al-Futaih... al-Lawha wal-Hayah” [Fuad al-Futaih.. the Painting and the Life], The Yemeni American News, 9 March 2018.

Author unknown, “Hiwar ma’ al-Fannan al-Tashkili al-Yamani Fuad al-Futaih alladhi Ya’ish fi Almanya” [A Conversation with the Yemeni Visual Artist Fuad al-Futaih Who Lives in Germany], Al-Masaa, issue 8821, 11 December 1979.

Author unknown, “Mosaic”, The Middle East, April 1987.

Author unknown, “Shahadat min al-Fannan al-Yamani Fuad al-Futaih: Al-Muqaddas fil-Fann al-‘Arabi al-Mu’asir” [Testimonies from the Yemeni Artist Fuad al-Futaih: The Sacred in Contemporary Arab Art], Al-Kifah al-Arabi, nos. 50 and 55 / Alam al-Thaqafa, nos. 18 and 19 [c. late 1970s–early 1980s].

Author unknown, “Wazir al-Thaqafa yaftah Ma’rad al-Funun al-Tashkiliyya” [The Minister of Culture Opens the Visual Arts Exhibition], Al-Thawra, Sana’a, 26 November 1992.

Badr, Fouad Muhammad, “Al-Fann al-Tashkili fi al-Yaman lam yatamakkan ba’d min al-wuquf ‘ala qadamayh” [Visual Art in Yemen Has Not Yet Been Able to Stand on Its Own Feet], Al-Thaqafiah, issue 310, Sana’a, 24 February, 2000.

Fluck, Martina (interviewer), “Fouad Al-Futaih”, Yemen Times, 3 April 1991.

National Art Centre (Samsarat al-Mansurah, Sana’a), Cultural Season Programme 1994, institutional document, Fuad al-Futaih personal archives.

Porter, Venetia, Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East, London, British Museum Press, 2006.

Sallah, Tijan M., “The Art of Fuad Al-Futaih” in Leila Ahmed, “The Women of Islam”, Transition, Issue 83, Vol. 9, No. 3, Cambridge Massachussetts, 2000, p. 97.

Sallah, Tijan M., “Women of Color: An Artist Breaks with Yemen’s Traditions”, Worldview, The National Peace Corps Association, Vol. 12, No. 3, June–August 1999.

Further readings

Alviso-Marino, Anahi, Art et Politique au Yémen, Karthala SciencesPo–Aix-en-Provence, Collection Questions Transnationales, (Forthcoming).

Alviso-Marino, Anahi, “Yemen’s Free Atelier: History and Context in the Arabian Peninsula”, in Anneka Lenssen, Sarah A. Rogers, Nada Shabout (eds.), Modern Art of the Arab World: Primary Documents, New York, The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), 2018.

Alviso-Marino, Anahi, « La notion de génération et les rapports de domination dans l’écriture d’une histoire de l’art au Yémen », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 142, 2017.

Alviso-Marino, Anahi, “Making Stories Visible. A Yemeni Art History”, in Anthony Downey (ed.), Future Imperfect: Cultural Institutions and Contemporary Art Practices in the Middle East, Berlin, Sternberg Press, 2016.

Baqer, Ahmad, Journey through the Contemporary Arts in the Arab World: Contemporary Arab Artists from the Arabian Peninsula, Darat al Funun–The Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, Amman, 2000.

Dalloul Art Foundation archives: https://dafbeirut.org/artists/fouad-al-futaih

Sowailem, Yahya, Ma’aradh Al Rabia’ Wa Bidayat Al Tashkeel fil Kuwait [The Spring Exhibitions and the Beginnings of Visual Art in Kuwait], Kuwait, 2009.

Audiovisual

Fluck, Martina, documentary film Frau ohne Schleier [Woman without a veil, documentary about the German-Yemeni marriage between Fuad al-Futaih and Ilona Kline and their life in Yemen] 45’, Yucca filmproduktion, 1994. https://www.yucca-filmproduktion.de/fi_schleier.html