Rafa Nasiri

Abstract

Rafa Nasiri (1940–2013) was born in Tikrit, Iraq. He received a diploma in painting from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1959. He studied printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (1959–1963) and the Gravura in Lisbon (1967–1969). He co-founded the New Vision Group in Baghdad (1969) and directed the Graphic Arts Department at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, where he taught from​ 1964 to 1989 and founded the graphic arts printing workshop there in 1974. In 1991, he left Iraq to teach painting, printmaking, and design at the University of Yarmouk in Irbid, Jordan (1991–1997). Between 1997 and 2003, he served as a lecturer at the University of Bahrain and​ director of the Bahrain Centre for the Fine Arts and Tradition. He returned to Amman in 2003, lived and worked there until he passed away in 2013 after a battle with cancer.

Biography

Rafa Nasiri was born in March 1940 in Tikrit, where his father, Kamel Nasiri, served as the city’s mayor. At age 11, he became interested in art through the influence of his schoolteacher, Saber Rashid, a graduate of the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad who had studied under Faiq Hassan (1914–1992). Nasiri exhibited some of his early paintings in his school’s annual exhibition before moving with his family to Baghdad in 1956. He subsequently began formal training at the Institute of Fine Arts after passing the entrance examination in life drawing.

It was an exceptional moment in Iraq’s history: the 1958 Revolution had toppled Iraq’s monarchy and established the republic. The local art community was continually embroiled in questions about how to transition from the effects of their Western training to forging a local identity aligned with their civilisational lineages. Nasiri and his cohort were in conversation with their artist-teachers, navigating shifting intellectual, social, and political environments, and often assisted them in producing art for the new republic.

Nasiri's accounts detail studio work during his years of study at the Institute: students painted from still-life and semi-nude models and attended classes in design, art history, psychology, calligraphy, and ceramics. He also recorded his fascination with a temporary exhibition of Chinese antiques, watercolours, ink prints, and traditions hosted at the Institute’s main hall. Upon earning his diploma in 1959, Nasiri chose Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts for postgraduate studies. There, he studied printmaking with Huang Yu Yi, who trained him to master traditional methods of applying colour with speed and accuracy. The teacher shared art magazines imported from Hong Kong with his student, providing insights into Western art trends, while also staying in close contact with art produced in China. Between the two highly surveilled states, Nasiri recorded every detail of his life in letters and postcards he sent to Baghdad; some of them survived and had been digitised by both May Muzaffar, his life partner, as well as the New York University Abu Dhabi’s (NYUAD) Arab Art Archive.

In 1963, Nasiri graduated and returned to Baghdad where he took up a teaching position at the Institute of Fine Arts a year later. He began his tenure by exhibiting the graphic works he had printed in China, such as a series of colour woodcuts he exhibited at the Czechoslovak Cultural Center in Baghdad in 1965, and by drawing attention to the technical knowledge and formal qualities he had acquired in China. In 1967, Nasiri—together with Hashim Samarchi and Salim al-Dabbagh—received scholarships from the Gulbenkian Foundation to study printmaking at the Portuguese Graphic Society (Gravura) in Lisbon. Studying under John Oghan and Elias George, the group received training in lithography and zinc and copper etching, further solidifying Nasiri’s printmaking skills.

Upon his return, Nasiri co-initiated the New Vision group in 1969, and in their first group exhibition in 1971, he presented a collection of (novel) acrylic paintings that presented the formal possibilities of the Arabic letter as an element in modern Arab art. Continuing to link his abstract and modern expressions to inherited traditions, he also joined The One Dimension group in 1971, further investigating the philosophical and theoretical inspirations of Arabic script. Soon, Nasiri became artistically independent of the group and received significant commissions, including a mural for the Reinsurance Company. There he met his future life partner, poet and art critic May Muzaffar, and married two years later, on 31 December 1973. This period also brought his work to regional art institutions, such as Kuwait’s Sultan Gallery (1971), as well as international ones, including the Norwegian International Print Biennale, which Nasiri frequented from 1972 onward.

The Institute of Fine Arts did not have a printing department at the time. So Nasiri continued to experiment with painting and collage until he participated in the Sommerakademie in Salzburg in 1974, reconnected with printmaking there under the German artist Otto Eglau, and returned to Baghdad with five colourful etchings and the idea of establishing a Graphic Department at the Institute of Fine Arts there. He prompted students to engage with graphic arts techniques in their work. In the same year, Baghdad hosted its First Biennale of Arab Art, and Nasiri engaged with the broader network of Arab artists who participated in this gathering, but also found ways to spend his summers in print workshops in Salzburg (1975) and recurrently in London (in 1976, 1981, 1982, and 1989). There, he produced several portfolios of copper and zinc etchings, achieving a high degree of transparency in abstract compositions that feature endless horizons and incorporate Arabic letter forms as graphic elements. By then, Nasiri was manifesting his masterful work in the hurufiyya movement.

Nasiri brought his works to the Second Biennale of Arab Art in Rabat (1976), the São Paulo Biennale (1979), and the Arts Festival or Cultural Moussem of Asilah (f. 1978). He served on the preparation committee for the International Baghdad Festival for Visual Art (1986). He maintained an active artistic life despite the Iraq-Iran War (1980–1988), further consolidating his influence as a cultural organiser, designer, and mentor in Baghdad, when he opened his Al Muhtaraf (the Workshop) (f. 1987) for production, events, and exhibitions by other artists, including his friends, Ismail Fattah and Dia Azzawi.

In 1989, Nasiri returned to his alma mater, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, with a retrospective. There, he led workshops on modern printmaking methods, and he delivered a lecture at the Hangzhou Academy on abstraction in contemporary art and the Western art market. He retired from his work at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in the same year.

In 1991, Nasiri accepted to teach painting, printmaking, and design at Yarmouk University (Irbid, Jordan), and he lived between Irbid and Amman until 1997. At the newly established Darat al Funun (1993), Nasiri set up a printmaking studio, delivered a series of lectures on graphic art and Iraqi art, and engaged with other Arab artists and intellectuals visiting or based in Amman.

In autumn 1997, he moved to Bahrain to lecture at the University of Bahrain and to direct the Bahrain Center for the Fine Arts and Tradition. That same year, Nasiri published his book Fann al-Grafik al-Muʿasir (Contemporary Graphic Art). He continued to shape cultural publishing between 2000 and 2003 as the design lead and an editorial board member for the University of Bahrain periodical Thaqafat (Cultures). A significant milestone of this period was Homage to al-Mutanabbi, initiated in 2000 and inspired by the words of the great Abbasid poet. At a university bookshop in Cairo, Al-Nasiri encountered a facsimile of an illuminated manuscript of the poems and used that encounter to develop an extended body of work, including etchings and mixed-media works, that explored the text's material and poetic presence. These works were first exhibited at Al Riwaq Gallery in Manama in 2002.

After returning to Amman in the summer of 2003, Nasiri dedicated himself to his art and established another personal studio in 2004. In 2009, Nasiri was diagnosed with prostate cancer but continued to work and show until his passing in Amman on 7 December 2013. The Rafa Nasiri Annual Award for Graphic Arts honours Nasiri’s legacy by awarding an outstanding graphic art piece every year since 2014.

Bibliography

Aldabbagh, Siba. "Mysticism in the Works of Three Contemporary Middle Eastern Artists." Contemporary Practices of Art Journal 11 (2015): 78-85.

Katrib, Ruba. "Representation and identity: Reflections on presenting contemporary art in an American museum." Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World 15, no. 1-2 (2021): 199-214.

Muzaffar, May. Ana wa Rafa al-Nasiri. Qissat al-Maa’ wan-Nar. Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2021.

—. Story of Water and Fire. Berlin: Hatje Cantz and al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art and Hatje Cantz, 2023.

Nasiri, Rafa. "Rafa Nasiri in Conversation with Dia al-Azzawi: An Obsession with Going Out to the Other." Art in Translation 16, no. 4 (2024): 614-622.

Nusair, Isis. "The cultural costs of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq: A conversation with art historian Nada Shabout." Feminist Studies 39, no. 1 (2013): 119-148.

Rauh, Elizabeth. "Experiments in Eden: Mid-century artist voyages into the Mesopotamian marshlands." Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World 15, no. 1-2 (2021): 121-133.

Saad, Qassim. "Contemporary Iraqi Art: Origins and Development." Scope. Art 3 (2008).

Salim, Rashad, and Hannah Lewis. "The ‘Ark Re-Imagined’." Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World 15, no. 1-2 (2021): 239-254.

Al-Shamary, Wejdan Najah Abdulrazzaq. "The Effectiveness of the Letterisme Composition in the Graphic Prints of Artist Rafie Al-Nasiri." Alkut University College Journal, 2025, no. 2025 (2025): 40-64.‎

Al-Azzawi, Dia. “Plastic Art Intertwined with World Literature: An Iraqi Testimony.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, no. 34, “World Literature: Perspectives and Debates” (2014): 10–26. Muzaffar, May. “Friendship: Testimony and Scenes.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, no. 36, “Friendship: Representations and Cultural Variations” (2016): 227–264.

Muzaffar, May, and Rafa Nasiri. “The Secret Thread between the Old and the New in Art: Interview with Rafa Al-Nasiry.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, no. 24, “Archeology of Literature: Tracing the Old in the New” (2004): 205–224.

Muzaffar, May. At-Tawasul wat-Tamayuz. Al-Fann al-Hadith fil-Iraq [Modern Art in Iraq. Continuity and Differentiation]. Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2015, 148–159.

Monographs

Khazindar, Mona, ed. Lulwah Al Homoud, Rafa Nasiri: The Art Library: Discovering Arab Artists. Milan/New York: Rizzoli, 2021.

Mejcher-Atassi, Sonja, and May Muzaffar, eds. Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books. Milan: Skira, 2017.

Muzaffar, May. Rafa al-Nasiiri. Rassam al-Mashahid al-Kawniyyah. Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2010.

Muzaffar, May. Rafa Nasiri: 50 Years of Printmaking. Milan: Skira, 2013.

Nasiri, Rafa. Khamsuna ʿaman bayn ash-Sharq wal-Gharb: Maqalat wa Hiwarat [Fifty Years Between East and West: Essays and Conversations]. Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2019.

—. Rihlati ila as-Sin [My Journey to China]. Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2012.

—. Afaq wa Maraya: Maqalat fil Fann at-Tashkili [Horizons and Mirrors: Essays in Plastic Art]. Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2005.

—. Fann al-Graphic al-Muasir [Contemporary Graphic Art]. Beirut: Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 1997.

Online Resources

The official website of the Iraqi artist and printmaker Rafa Nasiri http://rafanasiri.com/

Rafa Nasiri’s YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@rafanasiri

"Rafa Nasiri and May Muzaffar Collection." NYU Special Collections, Arab Art Archive. https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/arabartarchive/ad_mc_092/

Videos

Interview with Rafa Nasiri, by Ricardo Karam, within the series Iraqioon (Iraqis), c. 2013.

https://youtu.be/EwXC-7c1Lfo

Lecture by Rafa Nasiri on Iraqi artists Shaker Hassan al Said, Ismail Fattah, and Nuha al Radi, Darat al Funun, Amman, 2004.

https://youtu.be/FwPlBvUGEsM

Lecture by Rafa Nasiri titled “Universal Poster for Palestine”, Darat al Funun, Amman, 2001.

https://youtu.be/ObmWLzrjQe0

Interview with Rafa Nasiri on his exhibition Ten Years… Three Cities at Bahrain National Museum, Bahrain National Television, Manama, 1999.

https://youtu.be/t44B7ckkPpg

Lecture by Rafa Nasiri on “Visual Resources”, Darat al Funun, Amman, 1995.https://youtu.be/Ua_bBWaQ4G8

A seminar on “Graphic Art”, presented by Rafa Nasiri and Rashid Diab, Darat al Funun, Amman, 1995.

https://youtu.be/CkpUhTYV-ac

Interview with Rafa Nasiri, by Ferial Hussein, within the program Lawha wa Fannan (A Painting and an Artist) program, Iraqi Television, 1986.

https://youtu.be/4Guc3SpbJeo