Artworks
Fattah's drawings from the 1970s and 1980s are more like sketches with limited colours, lines, and composition. His subjects are predominantly humans in his sculpture series of bodies and figures, often a naked woman, as a representation of humankind. The bronze sculptures also relate to existential themes where the male body is depicted accurately, while the female features are partially recognisable. The figures are characterised by their tall stature, broad shoulders, slender feet, and naked bodies, dissolving and reducing to shadows or ghosts and sometimes transforming into different grey spots and geometric shapes. The heads of the figures poignantly reflect the experience of the martyred Arab man and are devoid of any narrative representation, ranging from expressionism to figurative abstraction.
The artist does not rely on specific obsessions, ideas, or interpretations. Instead, his primary aim is to highlight the outlines and their relationship with the void in space. This idea is expressed in the overall mass as an independent and integrated unit. Thus, he compensates for movement through the distance between two seemingly rigid masses, but the perspective changes according to the viewer's movement.
The artist's use of confrontation and harmony in composition reflects his personal and artistic history. In his oeuvre, he seeks to express the cultural and sensory dimensions through human form, simultaneously confronting and questioning our destiny.
During the 1970s, the artist's output in painting was limited as he devoted most of his time to sculpture. He was commissioned to erect statues in the squares of Baghdad, where several monuments dedicated to Iraqi literary and artistic figures are located. Among these are statues of poets such as Abu Nuwas (bronze, 1972), Abd al-Muhsin al-Kadhimi (bronze, 1973) in the Kadhimiya neighbourhood of Baghdad, Ma'ruf al-Rusafi (bronze, 1970), a statue of the Baghdad painter Yahya al-Wasiti at the Arts Centre (at the Ministry of Culture) in Baghdad (bronze, 1972), and another of the philosopher al-Farabi (bronze, 1972) in al-Zawraa Park. Fattah also executed several murals, including the bronze mural of the National Company, Ancient Arabic Medicine (bronze and marble), murals at the Insurance Building, and those depicting the Tigris and Euphrates (marble) at the Ministry of Culture.
The Martyr's Monument is recognised as one of the most important architectural landmarks in forming Iraqi local identity artistically and architecturally. The Martyr's Monument is recognised as one of the most important architectural landmarks in forming local identity, both artistically and architecturally. Constructed between 1981 and 1983, Fattah devoted a long time to the monument after winning a design competition in 1978 with architect Saman Asaad Kamal and the Baghdad Architecture Group. The work is inspired by Islamic architecture and the dome as a symbolic architectural element. The monument is built in the form of an Abbasid dome that is split into two halves. It appears as a single dome from one angle, although from other angles, one realises it is a dome split in two. The monument was built as a tribute to the Iraqis who died in the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88).
Fattah's artistic vision changed after the completion of the Martyr's Monument. He often combined formal and sculptural techniques in the same work by colouring the borders or outlines of his sculptures, whether human heads or sculpted and painted bronze statues.
In the 1990s, the artist devoted his time to painting on paper. For him, painting was a respite from the rigours of sculpture. Iraqi art critic Suhael Sami Nader recalls that his paintings in this period evoked a sense of pleasure and freedom that he longed for, and he experimented with colours.
His drawings often reflect the forms and connotations of the sculptor's style in terms of simplicity of colour and composition. The subject matter is the same as that of his sculptures, limited to human existence but in a more subtle way. Abstract, tortured faces and heads characterise his paintings, sometimes repeated in the same work. He focuses on stylised images that are tragic, mysterious, and profound. In addition to using bright colours, his paintings range from white and blue to black and grey, and he even colours all surfaces, including the frames.
Fattah was a member of Jama’at al-Zawiya (the Corners Group), founded in 1967. In his book "Chapters from the History of the Visual Movement in Iraq," Shaker Hassan al-Saeed credits Fattah with the emergence of this group, as he was the one who convinced Faik Hassan to announce the establishment of a new group after Hassanr withdrew from Jama’at al-Ruwad (The Pioneers Group).
Fattah joined the signatories of the Towards a New Vision (Nahwa al-Ru’yah al-Jadida) manifesto in 1969 along with five other artists, Dia Azzawi, Hashim Samarchji (1937), Mohammed Muhriddin (1938–2015), Rafa al-Nasiri (1940–2013), and Saleh al-Jumaie (1940–). He was also a member of the Iraqi Plastic Artist Society (Jamʻiyat al-Fannanin al-Tashkiliyin al-ʻIraqiyin). He was President of the Society of Iraqi Artists for Abstract Art, Iraq, between 1971 and 1978.
The second Gulf War forced Fattah to leave Iraq for Qatar at the end of the 1990s, and he benefited from the support of Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammed bin Ali Al Thani after the war and during the period of instability and embargo imposed on Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait (1990–1991). Fattah spent his final years in Qatar, producing a body of work in his workshop in Doha. He also created the monumental sculpture Guardian of the Fertile Crescent at the front of Mathaf in 2001.
On 21 July 2004, Ismail Fattah arrived in Baghdad, only to die a few hours later, fulfilling his final wish to die in his country. Fattah's works are in public institutions and private collections in Iraq, Qatar, Jordan, Lebanon, Italy, the U.K., and France, in addition to several memorials and wall sculptures in Iraqi and Arab public institutions and parks, such as his last sculpture in the garden of Darat al-Funun in Amman.
