Lorna Selim

Abstract

Born in Sheffield into a musical household, Lorna Selim won a scholarship to study art in London (1945–1949), where she met Jewad Selim, who was to become her soulmate and husband. She began a new life in Baghdad in 1950 as an artist, wife, and citizen of her adoptive country. Selim immersed herself in the developing art scene of her new home and, captivated, she painted the beauty she saw around her. These contributions were instrumental in encouraging fellow artists to look to Baghdad and celebrate the city’s vibrancy rather than to the West for inspiration. Her work exemplified the ideas propounded in the Baghdad Modern Art Group (BMAG, 1951) manifesto—namely, to produce art committed to global modernism while also informed by local culture. She painted and exhibited in Baghdad throughout the 1950s, ‘60s and early ‘70s. As urban redevelopment uncovered hidden facets of the old Baghdad, Selim recorded its historic architecture in her unique style. She went on to develop this style in a series of paintings called Domes and, latterly, progressed to creating naïve representations of landscapes, cathedrals, and other buildings.

Biography

Early Years (1928 – 1950)

Lorna Beryl Selim (née Hales) was born in Sheffield, England on 15 June 1928. She was the second daughter of a talented musician and although her early childhood coincided with the difficult years of the Great Depression, she grew up in an environment rich in music. An able person from a young age, at 11 Selim, then Hales, won a place at Grammar School (1939–1945), which she attended during the bleak years of World War II. Although her exposure to art was limited to local galleries, she began working with pencil, ink, and watercolour. Her early artistic promise can be seen in a watercolour capturing the majesty of an old cathedral she visited. She received the Northern Universities Higher Schools Certificate at 17, finishing top in her year with a distinction in art, and won a four-year university scholarship to attend the Slade School of Art to study for a diploma in drawing, painting, design, anatomy, and the history of art (1945–1949). In her final year she transferred to the Art Teachers’ Training College to qualify for an art teacher diploma, which was awarded in 1949 and was converted to ‘qualified teacher’ following a year of teaching art at Tapton House School in Chesterfield.

Young and impressionable and with a new group of friends, she began her life as an artist and never looked back. It was in her second year at Slade that Selim met the man who was to become her husband, the prominent Iraqi artist Jewad Selim (1919–1961), whom she met through a fellow hall resident. However, it was music that initially brought them together, as she played the violin and Jewad Selim the guitar.

London being full of exciting events after the war years, together they immersed themselves in all the various forms of art. Nine years her senior, Jewad Selim had been exposed to a wide range of experiences in his travels and studies, and he spoke to her about the great artworks he had seen; he understood what made a work of art good and was able to articulate it precisely.

Life with Jewad (1950–1961)

After completing her teacher training, Selim flew to Baghdad in September 1950 to join her future husband. They married and started their new life in the Selim family home, together with his mother and youngest brother Nazar Salim (1925–1982). Jewad Selim wrote in a letter to his sister Naziha (1923–2008), then studying art in Paris, that Lorna was coping well with the September heat. In fact, Lorna loved the stimuli of Baghdad—the local people, the heat, and the dry flat, sandy-brown landscape. While many of her fellow artists in Baghdad looked to Western ideas of art for inspiration, Lorna was very keen to record the richness Baghdad had to offer. This became the subject matter of her early works: as a visual artist uninfluenced by heritage or folklore, she started with a scene she could see and then developed her ideas and style as she worked, although she remained greatly influenced by Jewad’s work, as he was by hers. Lorna threw herself wholeheartedly into the contemporary art scene in Baghdad, joining the city’s art societies—painting and exhibiting with Faiq Hassan’s Pioneers art group, also known as Al Rowad. After 1951, when Jewad and Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925–2004) established the Baghdad Modern Art Group (BMAG), she exhibited with them at every opportunity. Later, when the Iraqi Artists’ Society moved to new quarters, she regularly participated in their exhibitions. Her artistic contributions were instrumental in encouraging fellow artists to look to Baghdad itself, to celebrate the wealth of stimuli around them. Despite family commitments and all the distractions around her, Lorna was able to develop a style that became recognisable as her own. At this stage, Lorna worked in two styles: depicting local scenes bearing the mark of European modern artists and second, local scenes abstracted into simple, elegant shapes and lines reminiscent of the geometry of the local architecture, rendered in her own aesthetic. These works were abstract in style, yet still managed to portray locality in the warm colours of the region’s clothing and traditional buildings. (The latter works were shown in India at an exhibition of Iraqi art organised by the governments of both countries.)

When Iraq was invited to have a pavilion at the 1st International Fair of Damascus (1953), Jewad was commissioned to craft sculptures representing the country and Lorna to paint pictures on the pavilion’s windows.

Monument Years (1958–1961)

After Jewad was awarded a commission to design the Freedom Monument with Rifat Chadirji (1926–2020), the family relocated to Italy so that he could work on creating its bas-relief figures. Lorna, supporting Jewad with his work, was immersed in the vision to which he aspired, its translation into bronze, and the placement of the figures on the travertine clad wall in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. After his tragic early death in January 1961, Rifat Chadirji employed Lorna to join him in overseeing the installation of the figures. Regarding her responsibility as a custodial extension of Jewad’s artistic vision, she devised a system for hanging the bas-reliefs, ensuring their placement was in accordance with his intentions.

Independent years (1961–1971)

Widowed at the young age of 32, Lorna was now the only provider for her young family. She returned to teaching after being granted Iraqi citizenship, first at the Girls’ College/Queen Alia College from 1961 to 1965 (among her students was Suad Al Attar (b. 1942) who later became a renowned artist) and then transferring to the Department of Architecture at the University of Baghdad’s engineering college, where she taught drawing to architects from 1965 until 1971.

When painting outside working hours, Lorna took inspiration from the buildings and countryside around her, using the patterns she saw on walls that were laid out in regular geometric designs. She also saw patterns in the trees and people’s clothes, and her abstract style of depicting people evolved in this way. As her route to work took Lorna past mounds of rubble and the wrecked remains of houses along Al-Jumhuriya Street, a new highway that cut through the old city – and this mirrored the devastation of her own life following her bereavement. Beyond the mounds of earth, the hidden alleyways were now open, revealing beautiful old buildings. She began to paint first what remained of the neighbourhood in dark verdigris greens reminiscent of the bronzes Jewad had worked on, but this colour did not suit these beautiful houses.

Max Ernst’s (1891–1976) painting The Entire City provided the inspiration she sought. Lorna wanted a woodblock effect in the base layer of paint; light and form was then created by wiping off the paint within the frame. Intricate detail was added to bring out the old buildings’ elaborate brickwork, wrought iron balconies, and decorative elements. These works were painted in the golden-brown ochres of the desert and sold faster than she could paint them. Friends would direct her to new areas as the government clearance project continued to open up formerly hidden alleyways that would have been impossible to draw without the demolition work creating new vistas. Consequently, Lorna’s work became the only record of some of Baghdad’s old architecture and were very much sought after. By 1964 she had recorded the old houses along both banks of the river, holding a one person show at Ea Gallery in the Fine Arts Museum of Baghdad, part of a new civic centre project.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon wanted to acknowledge the rapid development of the arts in Iraq, a country then revolutionising painting and sculpture as well as poetry and prose. The first two gold medals awarded by the foundation were given in 1964, and in 1966 the award went to Lorna Selim and Kadhim Haider, both painters. Only four of the ten medals were ever awarded. In December 2018, the Gulbenkian Foundation invited Lorna to visit their exhibition Art and Architecture between Lisbon and Baghdad. They celebrated her achievements as an Iraqi artist and reiterated the artistic and historic value of Lorna’s sketches of Baghdad.

Return to UK leaving her soul in Baghdad (1971–2021)

In 1971 Lorna returned to Sheffield. She taught in the daytime and painted in the evening. Returning to her sketches of old houses in Baghdad, she reworked stretches of roads from new perspectives and new lengths. A decade and a half later, her heart still lay in Baghdad, she was delighted to receive an invitation as an honoured guest to Baghdad’s International Art Festival in in 1986. She found the city very much changed, with few Shenashil (a local term for traditional Baghdadi houses with projecting wooden bay windows enclosed by carved latticework) still standing.

Moving to Wales brought Lorna new inspiration. Chepstow Castle awakened her desire to explore changed styles and media; the immense ruin on the towering cliff side was reminiscent of Al-Jumhuriya Street and she rendered the old grey ruin in watercolour and showed it at the summer watercolour exhibition of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1988.

In 1987, Lorna spotted a drawing at an exhibition that was to give her the means to depict the white domes of the Mosque of Madrasa of al Asifyah (1608), next to the Old Bridge (جسر الشهدا The Martyrs' Bridge) in Baghdad.  To recreate the elegant curves of its domes, she would detail one area or add colour in another. Using the soft tones of her rendering of Chepstow castle, Lorna created distortions of perspective to include more than the eye would naturally see, she worked on a series of oil paintings entitled Domes. The new series of works were shown in a one-person exhibition at London’s Kufa Gallery in 1989, using the signature of ‘LBS’. She sold most of the works she had painted, but collectors were hesitant to purchase the works bearing the new signature and asked her to double sign both as LBS and Lorna, thus verifying the authenticity of the new signature and its association with the Iraqi artist ‘Lorna’.

1n 1989, Russian triptychs drew Lorna to the elegance of naïve lines and gold detailing. She began capturing the majesty of churches and cathedrals, aiming to represent the sheer size of the buildings as well as depicting all sides on connected panels. Her paintings of Hereford and Lincoln Cathedrals show them both by night and day on opposite sides of the works. Visiting Brecon Cathedral and St Mary’s Church in Abergavenny, Lorna returned to a fascination of her youth— how the light played through the glazed windows as it fell into the side chapels. Her last trio of works were painted in a naïve style inspired by the French artist Gérard Laplau (1938–2009). The painting’s central image was of a house surrounded by smaller panels depicting neighbouring buildings within sight of the property.

Now in her late 80s, Lorna walked to each location with a sketch book and pencil, where she drew from life, noting the time of day, weather, site position, and colours. She completed the last of the trio at the age of 92, capturing the beauty of where she lived despite increasing frailty and failing eyesight.

Lorna’s work demonstrates her versatility as an artist, and a receptivity to different styles, techniques, and colour palettes that enabled her to create in a manner that remained very much her own. While her oeuvre spans seven decades and multiple countries, they remain unified by her devotion to architectural form, cultural memory, and the interplay of light and structure. Her sketches of the old Baghdad houses, Shenasheel, were lovingly cared for and gifted to the British Museum to ensure their long-term preservation. Lorna remained deeply connected to Iraq across her long life. Each January, on the anniversary of Jewad’s death, she revisited the Baghdad sketches, cooked Iraqi meals, and immersed herself in memories of the city that shaped her artistic identity.

Lorna’s works are held in major collections including the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art (Baghdad), Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts (Amman), Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha), Ramzi & Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation (Beirut), Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah), the Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon), and the British Museum, which houses her invaluable sketches of Baghdad’s lost architectural heritage.

Bibliography

2025 Sagharchi, N, Selim ZJ, eds. Jewad Selim: Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings and Sculptures, Skira, Milan.

2022 Porter V Gift of Drawings by Lorna Selim (1928 – 2021) Middle East, News Letter, British Museum Issue 7,

2022 Ayad M Interview with Amin Alsaden: Remembering Lorna Selim: the British-Iraqi artist who cherished Baghdad, The National February 25th 2022. https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/2022/02/25/remembering-lorna-selim-the-british-iraqi-artist-who-cherished-baghdad

2022 Hashim T Fi al-fann al-naswi, alemiyan we mahalyan, Makou July 2022

2021 Kafil-Hussain M Painting architectural heritage in modern Baghdad: The art of Lorna Selim’, Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World, 15: 151–63, https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00045_1

2019 Nnaji A Under the Palm Trees: Modern Iraqi Art with Mohamed Makiya and Jewad Selim, New York: Rizzoli.

2011 Butters A piece of art that symbolises hope for the people of troubled Iraq and the woman who helped to create it, Abergavenny Chronicle

2010 Shabout, Nada et al. editors Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art. Qatar Museums Authority / Skira.

2002 Al-Khamis U ‘Lorna Selim remembers’, in M. Faraj (ed.), Strokes of Genius: Contemporary Iraqi Art, London: Saqi, pp. 41–46.

1998 Kachachi, Inam Lorna: Her Years with Jewad Selim [Lurna: Sanawatuha maʿa Jewad Selim]. Dar al-Jadid, Beirut and Lebanon

1983 Al-Said, Shakir Hassan Chapters from the History of the Visual Arts Movement in Iraq [Fusul min tarikh al-haraka al-tashkiliya fi al-‘Iraq]. Vol. 1, Department of Cultural Affairs and Publishing.

1977 Salim, Nazar Iraq: Contemporary Art. Ministry of Information.

1962 Al-Rawi, Nouri Reflections on Modern Iraqi Art [Ta'ammulat fi al-fann al-'iraqi al-hadith]. Directorate of Arts and Culture, Ministry of Guidance.

1957 Ssabri, Ata “The Baghdad Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture.” Al-Adab, no. 5, pp. 77–80.

Further Readings

2025 Sagharchi, N, Selim ZJ, eds. Jewad Selim: Catalog Raisonné of Paintings and Sculptures, Skira, Milan.

2010 Shabout, Nada et al. editors Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art. Qatar Museums Authority / Skira.

2002 Al-Khamis U ‘Lorna Selim remembers’, in M. Faraj (ed.), Strokes of Genius: Contemporary Iraqi Art, London: Saqi, pp. 41–46.