Mahmoud Sabri

Abstract

Mahmoud Sabri, an Iraqi artist and intellectual, played a crucial role in shaping the artistic culture of mid-20th century Baghdad. Despite limited formal training, he became a prominent figure, advocating for socially conscious art that addressed the plight of the marginalised. Sabri’s critical engagement with the local art scene, including his critiques of prominent artists, sparked significant debates. Exiled in the early 1960s, he produced powerful works reflecting the struggles of the Iraqi people in dialogue with Mexican muralism and Soviet art. While his impact on Iraqi art became limited due to his exile, Sabri's legacy lies in his unwavering commitment to social justice and his belief in the transformative power of art.

Biography

Mahmoud Sabri is primarily known for a series of ambitious paintings from the early 1960s, highlighting the plight of Iraq’s marginalised and oppressed communities, paying specific attention to the working class and political dissidents. However, these works, produced when the artist was afforded some freedom of expression in exile, remained largely unseen in his home country. When international houses auctioned some of his works following his death, however, they obscured his most substantial achievements as a thinker and artist essential to the cultural landscape of mid-20th century Baghdad.

Upon completing his secondary education, Sabri received a scholarship from the Iraqi government to pursue a degree in social sciences in Loughborough, United Kingdom. Aside from informal art classes he took while studying abroad, he was a self-taught artist who his peers initially saw as an amateur. When he returned to Baghdad in 1949, Sabri became an active participant in the domestic gatherings that shaped the intellectual agendas of artists and architects of his generation. He joined one of the city’s leading artistic collectives, the​​ Société Primitive (SP) led by Faik Hassan (1914–1992), later renamed the ​​Pioneers Group; its members had a loosely defined agenda, generally understood to have been an interest in discerning the realities and landscapes of their country. This mirrored the project of the ​​Baghdad Group for Modern Art (BGMA), headed by Jewad Selim (1919–1961), intent on situating artistic production locally, too— but the manifesto of the latter’s collective explicitly declared a desire to synthesise Iraq’s heritage with modernism.

Sabri held full-time clerical jobs during the 1950s, but his artistic skills were sharpened as he continued to practice in his free time. He played an increasingly active role in the scene until he was elected in 1957 as Secretary of the newly established ​​Iraqi Artists Society. After the 1958 coup d’état, which came to be known as the July 14th Revolution, bringing an end to the British-installed monarchy that ruled Iraq since the 1921 founding of the modern nation, Sabri quit his job at the Al-Rafidain Bank to become the Director General of the new Exhibitions Administration, which organised government-sponsored fairs. In 1960, he left that position and moved to Moscow, Soviet Union, to pursue a formal education and to dedicate himself fully to art. Just before he was meant to return to Iraq, the 1963 Ba’athist-led coup toppled the first republican government and cracked down on the opposition, especially communists and their sympathisers. That year, Sabri moved to Prague and joined the Movement for the Defense of Iraqi People. This organisation included renowned poet Muhammad Mahdi Al-Jawahiri, novelist Dhu Al-Nun Ayyub, and feminist Nazihah Al-Dulaimi, among others. He lived in Czechoslovakia for over four decades and passed away shortly after relocating to the United Kingdom.

During the 1950s in Baghdad, Sabri managed to participate in numerous group exhibitions, with paintings depicting those who toiled endlessly on the land or the forgotten everyday people who endured miserable lives in an otherwise affluent country undergoing rapid oil-funded development. The painting ​The Water Carriers (c. 1950s) is exemplary of his output during this period, demonstrating Sabri’s unique stylised depictions, with angular, elongated figures alienated from their environments. His Massacre in Algeria (1956), which was looted from the state’s collection after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, captured his solidarity with the rebels fighting for independence from French colonialism. Sabri’s more profound impact was arguably not as an artist, however, but as an intellectual and agitator. Sabri avoided revealing whether he was affiliated with the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), but his texts conveyed a Marxist ideology, addressing the relationship between art and current modes of production, the class struggle under capitalism, and the artist’s responsibility toward society. As such, Sabri was one of the most critical voices who dared to question the status quo and engage the destitute.

One of his most notable texts was published in the early 1950s in ICP’s magazine Al-Thaqafah Al-Jadidah (The New Culture), tackling the elitism of the local art scene and how his fellow Iraqi artists did not address the masses. His provocative essay launched a prolonged debate in subsequent years, especially when Sabri singled out Jewad Selim and Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925–2004), two of the most prominent artists at the time, accusing the former of being only interested in reaching aristocrats and foreign diplomats due to organising his first solo exhibition at the home of a high-ranking official and found the latter’s work equally inaccessible, suggesting that the only reason people visited a show by Al Said was because it was held at the ​​Institute of Fine Arts. Sabri’s scathing critique portrayed both artists as aloof, producing regressive, deceptive, and vacuous work for the bourgeoisie, work that deviated from the demands of that moment and the needs of the Iraqi public.

His training at the Moscow State Art Institute, supervised by the Russian painter Aleksandr Deyneka (1899–1969), left an indelible mark on Sabri’s approach. It was between Moscow and Prague that he created those distinctive works that immortalised scenes and events from contemporary Iraq, exploring themes of popular resistance, martyrdom, and the national quest for liberation. His painting ​Death of a Child (1963) depicts a possibly preventable tragedy, but one that farmers had to contend with due to poor living conditions, while ​​​​Funeral (1961) pertains to a real event, a procession honouring the life of a political prisoner; both capture how his work had matured by then, referencing medieval Christian iconography, while establishing a closer dialogue with the Mexican artists he admired early on, including Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. These paintings were not shown in Iraq, however, and thus had little impact in that context. Sabri himself was able to return only once, when he participated in the 1973 First Congress of the General Union of Arab Plastic Artists, a precursor to the inaugural Biennale of Arab Art held in Baghdad in 1974 (each iteration of this nomadic Biennale took place in a different Arab city, convening in Rabat, Morocco, in 1976, then in Tripoli, Libya, in 1978).

In the late 1960s, Sabri’s work started shifting. He referenced Mesopotamian material culture in new paintings composed of various motifs found in cylinder seals in a commentary on humanity’s long history of tyranny. He also painted a series highlighting contemporary tools of organised violence by depicting metallic surfaces and machine parts to underscore how modern technology has been employed toward nefarious ends. The final transformation was marked by a 1971 presentation in Prague where he articulated his theory of Quantum Realism, and inaugurated his only solo exhibition. Inspired by Albert Einstein’s ruminations on relativity, Sabri aimed to demonstrate how each atom possessed its temporality, representing their electromagnetic spectra in multichromatic geometric compositions. His abstraction, based strictly on scientific principles, may appear esoteric, but it was the artist’s final attempt to understand the forces underlying the real world.

Mahmoud Sabri’s work might not have received much acclaim during his lifetime, and his direct contributions to the region might have been severed when he left Iraq, but he remains one of the most influential modern artists in the Arab world. Sabri wanted to connect his production with actual conditions to expose the underbelly of the dazzling transformations riddled with disparities in his country. His discourse and art shed light on a cruel world of inequality and persecution, with which the artist, coming from a humble background himself, must have identified. Sabri believed that art is inherently political and that artists must utilise the tools at their disposal to denounce injustices within their communities, thereby expressing sympathy and affirming a sense of duty towards their fellow human beings.

Bibliography

Bahjat Sabri Bedan, “Mahmud Sabri Bain ‘Alamain” (Mahmoud Sabri Between Two Worlds), 2008, YouTube videos, posted May 31 and June 1, 2012. https://youtu.be/62ffXxZZpvA?si=naapbhs1X52g3ZN-&t=222, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbznZbfqBDw, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOpPmscvKgg.

Bahjat Sabri Bedan, “Shawq ila Al-Hurriyah: Dirasah li-’Amal Al-Fannan Mahmud Sabri” (Longing for Freedom: A Study in the Works of Artist Mahmoud Sabri), 1984, YouTube videos, posted May 31, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2KjnhJFWMk and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=149wtgqHGBo.

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Art in Iraq To-day (London: Embassy of the Republic of Iraq, 1961).

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, The Grass Roots of Iraqi Art (London: Wasit Graphic and Publishing Limited, 1983).

Khalid ‘Abd Al-’Aziz Al-Qassab, Dhikrayat Fanniyah (Artistic Memories) (London: Dar Al-Hikmah, 2007).

Mahmud Sabri, “Al-Azmah Al-Rahinah fi Al-Fann Al-Mu’asir” (The Current Crisis in Contemporary Art), Al-Thaqafah Al-Jadidah 1, no. 1 (November 1953): 23-31.

Mahmud Sabri, “Fann wa Jumhur: Ta’liq ‘ala Ma’radhai Al-Ustathain Jawad Salim wa Shakir Hasan” (Art and Public: Commentary on the Two Exhibitions by Messrs. Jewad Selim and Shakir Hassan Al Said), Al-Thaqafah Al-Jadidah, no. 2 (December 1953): 90-95.

Mahmud Sabri, “Mushkilat Al-Rasm Al-’Iraqi Al-Mu’asir” (The Problem with Contemporary Iraqi Painting), Al-Adab 4, No. 1 (January 1956): 65-69.

Mahmud Sabri wa ‘Abdu, “Fannanun ‘Iraqiyun: Ma’ Al-Fannan Al-’Iraqi Mahmud Sabri” (Iraqi Artists: With Iraqi Artist Mahmoud Sabri), Al-Funun 2, no. 10 (July 10, 1957): 8-9 and 16-17.

Mahmud Sabri, “Mushkilat Al-Fannan Al-’Iraqi: Al-’Awamil Al-Lati Takshif wa Tuwajjih Intajah” (Problem of the Iraqi Artist: Factors That Reveal and Guide His Production), Al-Thaqafah Al-Jadidah, no. 4 (1958): 146-152.

Mahmud Sabri, “Al-Fann Al-’Iraqi Bain ‘Ahdain” (Iraqi Art Between Two Eras), Al-Thaqafah Al-Jadidah 7, No. 11 (September 1959): 19-37.

Mahmud Sabri, Bayan Waqi’iyat Al-Kamm: Fann Jadid li-‘Asr Jadid (The Manifesto of Quantum Realism: A New Art for a New Age) (Baghdad: Matba’at Al-Adib Al-Baghdadiyah, c1970s).

Mahmud Sabri, “Al-Turath wa Al-Mu’asarah fi Al-Fann” (Heritage and Contemporaneity in Art), Al-Aqlam 9, No. 4 (1973): 2-9.

Mahmoud Sabri, “Paintings Based on Atomic Spectra: ‘Quantum Realism’, Leonardo 7, no. 1 (Winter 1974): 53-55.

Mahmoud Sabri, Quantum Realism: An Art of the Techno-Nuclear Age (Baghdad: Remzi, 1975).

Mahmoud Sabri, “Letters: Quantum Realism: An Art of the Techno-Nuclear Age,” Leonardo 10, no. 4 (Autumn 1977): 351.

Mahmud Sabri wa Mahmud Al-Bayyati, “Mahmud Sabri: Waqi’iyat Al-Kamm” (Mahmoud Sabri: Quantum Realism), Al-Karmal, no. 11 (1984): 198-211.

Mahmud Sabri, Al-Fann wa Al-Insan: Dirasah fi Shakl Jadid min Al-Fann, Waqi’yat Al-Kamm (Art and the Human: Study in a New Form of Art, Quantum Realism), 2nd ed. (Damascus: Markaz Al-Abhath wa Al-Dirasat Al-Ishtirakiyah fi Al-‘Alam Al-‘Arabi, 1991).

Nizar Salim, Al-Fann Al-Iraqi Al-Mu’asir: Al-Kitab Al-Awal fi Al-Taswir (Iraq Contemporary Art: The First Book on Painting) (Luzan: Sartec, 1977).

Rif’at Al-Jadirji, Al-Ukhaidhir wa Al-Qasr Al-Balluri: Nushu’ Al-Nadhariyah Al-Jadaliyah fi Al-’Imarah (Al-Ukhaidhir and the Crystal Palace: The Formation of the Dialectic Theory in Architecture) (London: Riadh Al-Rayyis, 1991).

Shakir Hassan Al Said, Al-Fann Al-Tashkili Al-’Iraqi Al-Mu’asir (Contemporary Iraqi Plastic Art) (Tunis: Al-Munazzamah Al-’Arabiyah lil-Tarbiyah wa Al-Thaqafah wa Al-’Ulum, 1992).

Shakir Hassan Al Said, Fusul min Tarikh Al-Harakah Al-Tashkiliyah fi Al-’Iraq, Al-Juz’ Al-Awwal (Chapters from the History of the Plastic Movement in Iraq, the First Volume) (Baghdad: Wizarat Al-Thaqafah wa Al-I’lam, Da’irat Al-Shu’un Al-Thaqafiyah wa Al-Nashr, 1983).

Further Readings

Amin Alsaden, “Alternative Salons: Cultivating Art and Architecture in the Domestic Spaces of Post-World War II Baghdad,” 165–206, in The Art Salon in the Arab Region: Politics of Taste Making, edited by Nadia von Maltzahn and Monique Bellan (Beirut: Orient-Institut Beirut, 2018).

Amin Alsaden, “Baghdad’s Arab Biennial: Regional Subversions, Global Ambitions.” Third Text 33, no. 156 (January 2019): 121-150.

Amin Alsaden, “Mobilizing Grief: Mahmoud Sabri’s Acts of Solidarity,” Smarthistory, November 6, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/mahmoud-sabri-the-death-of-a-child/.

‘Abdullah Habah, “Al-Manabit Al-Falsafiyah li-Fann Mahmud Sabri” (The Philosophical Origins of the Art of Mahmoud Sabri), Al-Nnas (April 15, 2012), http://al-nnas.com/ARTICLE/AbdHaba/15m.htm.

‘Abdullah Habah, “Jamaliyat Al-Takhtit fi Fann Mahmud Sabri” (The Aesthetics of Sketching in the Art of Mahmoud Sabri), Al-Nnas (June 20, 2013), http://al-nnas.com/ARTICLE/AbdHaba/20m.htm.

‘Abdullah Habah, “Mahmud Sabri: Fannan wa Mufakkir” (Mahmoud Sabri: Artist and Thinker), Al-Nnas (July 18, 2011), http://al-nnas.com/ARTICLE/AbdHaba/18m.htm.

Hamdi Touqmachi, Mahmud Sabri: Hayatuh wa Fannuh w Fikruh (Mahmoud Sabri: His Life, Art & Thoughts) (Amman: Adib Books, 2013).

Olga Nefedova, “Three Monumental Murals for Baghdad: Data from Mahmoud Sabri, Shams al-Din Faris, Ahmed al Numan Study Years in the USSR in Context,” Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World 15, no. 1 and 2 (2021): 103–119.

Suheyla Takesh, “A Communist Mourning Icon: Mahmoud Sabri, Iraqi Art Student in Moscow (1960),” in Eileen Kane, Masha Kirasirova, and Margaret Litvin (eds.), Russian-Arab Worlds: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford Academic, 2023), 255–265.

Suheyla Takesh, “Iconographies of Pain in Mahmoud Sabri’s Work,” master’s thesis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018).

Suheyla Takesh, “Realism and Funerary Processions in Mahmoud Sabri’s Work,” The Rutgers Art Review 35 (2019): 89-111.

Suheyla Takesh, “The Hero (1963): On Mahmoud Sabri’s Turn to History in Addressing Iraq’s Modern-Day Political Urgencies,”Thresholds 47 (2019): 149–160.

Yasmin Sabri and Satta Hashem, First Retrospective: Mahmoud Sabri 1927-2012 (London, 2013).