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Lot Essay
While part of the modern Iraqi art movement, the artist Mahmoud Sabri has largely been overshadowed due to the fact that the artist was exploring many themes subversive to society at the time. While a founding member of the Society of Iraqi Artists and among the likes of Faeq Hassan and Shaker Hassan Al Said, the artist lived most of his life in exile. Rebelling against the political status of the Iraqi government, the artist expressed his opposition to the Ba’athist party and subsequently moved to Russia and studied at the Surikov Institute from 1961-1963, when this present work was painted. Training in mural painting under the guidance of the acclaimed Soviet Russian painter Aleksandr Deyneka, his work was charged with a socially consciousness, something that he would be deeply inspired by Soviet Socialist Russian style. Well-read in Marxist thought, he was also an active writer and advocate for Realism within the arts.
The present work is a rare depiction of two nude women, the first of its kind that Christie’s is proud to offer, and painted during the artist’s studies at the Surikov Institute. Painted very much in the way of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, however more naturalistic in form, the present work is a testament to the artist’s highly advanced Western education under Deyneka. Depicted with an overwhelming expressionism and realism, here forceful, angular planes are met with a visual language of geometric qualities. This is seen in the bodily angles, the outlines of their towels and even the background that adheres to a slightly fragmented quality.
These two nudes stand apart from Sabri’s themes that explore pain, protest and anger, depicting revolutionaries, poverty, floods and demonstrations. During this time in Moscow, there was a developmental shift in his style, showing a direct link stylistically to iconography with a palette that went beyond his classical use of blacks and reds and in which he experimented with classical and modern depictions of his realities. In this work, we notice Sabri’s careful attention to the contours of the body as seen in different perspectives, making this work exceptional for detailing these two women as part of an oeuvre depicting his own form of an international modernism.
Just after this period in Moscow the artist then moved to Prague to join the Committee for the Defense of the Iraqi People and during this time his paintings mostly depicted the suffering of the Iraqi people under the regime. His work later shifted to become more minimalist and abstract in nature through his studies in Quantum Realism which explored the relationship between colour in the arts and chemistry and physics.
The present work is a rare depiction of two nude women, the first of its kind that Christie’s is proud to offer, and painted during the artist’s studies at the Surikov Institute. Painted very much in the way of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907, however more naturalistic in form, the present work is a testament to the artist’s highly advanced Western education under Deyneka. Depicted with an overwhelming expressionism and realism, here forceful, angular planes are met with a visual language of geometric qualities. This is seen in the bodily angles, the outlines of their towels and even the background that adheres to a slightly fragmented quality.
These two nudes stand apart from Sabri’s themes that explore pain, protest and anger, depicting revolutionaries, poverty, floods and demonstrations. During this time in Moscow, there was a developmental shift in his style, showing a direct link stylistically to iconography with a palette that went beyond his classical use of blacks and reds and in which he experimented with classical and modern depictions of his realities. In this work, we notice Sabri’s careful attention to the contours of the body as seen in different perspectives, making this work exceptional for detailing these two women as part of an oeuvre depicting his own form of an international modernism.
Just after this period in Moscow the artist then moved to Prague to join the Committee for the Defense of the Iraqi People and during this time his paintings mostly depicted the suffering of the Iraqi people under the regime. His work later shifted to become more minimalist and abstract in nature through his studies in Quantum Realism which explored the relationship between colour in the arts and chemistry and physics.