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Lot Essay
Jewad Selim benefited from an eclectic and cosmopolitan education. Between 1938 and 1940, he studied in both Paris and Rome, before continuing his artistic training at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1946 to 1949. Back Garden, Camden Town was painted during this London period, a time in which Selim produced many of his most transient and observational depictions of everyday reality—works that would later give way to a more deliberate engagement with his Iraqi folkloric heritage.
The painting’s title reflects Selim’s fascination with the city and its artistic milieu. Of particular relevance is the Camden Town Group, an early twentieth-century Post-Impressionist circle active between 1911 and 1913, who convened to paint and discuss art and poetry in Walter Sickert’s studio in Camden Town. It is possible that Selim intended this work as an homage to that earlier group, having found himself living and working in the same area of London several decades later.
This exquisite composition depicts the view from the studio Selim shared with fellow Iraqi artists during his time at the Slade. The vantage point afforded him a dynamic study of light and colour—qualities that captivated him throughout his London years. In this work, he demonstrates a keen sensitivity to the subtle interplay between structure and atmosphere: the carefully planned juxtaposition of houses, rooftops and windows in the background contrasts with the looser, more expressive treatment of the foliage in the foreground. The irregular rhythm of the branches, painted with luminous energy, softens the angular geometry of the buildings behind them, capturing the fleeting glimmer of sunlight in a quiet London street. As the title suggests, Back Garden, Camden Town evokes a duality—between the natural and the urban, the private and the public. Selim’s palette, rich in both warm and muted tones, recalls the innovations of European modernism, particularly those of artists he greatly admired during his travels: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Henry Moore.
Selim’s European sojourn, and especially his years in London at the close of the 1940s, provided a vital foundation for the mature style he developed upon returning to Baghdad. There, in 1951, he co-founded the Baghdad Group for Modern Art, a movement that sought to reconcile modernist expression with indigenous cultural identity. Among the group’s followers were many of the leading figures of Iraq’s burgeoning modern art and literary scene, including Shakir Hassan Al-Said and Dia Al-Azzawi, as well as the Palestinian writer and critic Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. Jabra, a close interlocutor of Selim’s ideas, wrote extensively on his modernist vision and later published the artist’s biography in 1974 in Baghdad.
Although Jewad Selim’s life was cut tragically short in his early forties, he remains one of the few Arab artists to have engaged deeply with modern Western art while developing a profoundly original response to it. His legacy endures not only in his own body of work but also in the generations of Iraqi artists he inspired to explore modernism through the lens of their own cultural heritage.
The painting’s title reflects Selim’s fascination with the city and its artistic milieu. Of particular relevance is the Camden Town Group, an early twentieth-century Post-Impressionist circle active between 1911 and 1913, who convened to paint and discuss art and poetry in Walter Sickert’s studio in Camden Town. It is possible that Selim intended this work as an homage to that earlier group, having found himself living and working in the same area of London several decades later.
This exquisite composition depicts the view from the studio Selim shared with fellow Iraqi artists during his time at the Slade. The vantage point afforded him a dynamic study of light and colour—qualities that captivated him throughout his London years. In this work, he demonstrates a keen sensitivity to the subtle interplay between structure and atmosphere: the carefully planned juxtaposition of houses, rooftops and windows in the background contrasts with the looser, more expressive treatment of the foliage in the foreground. The irregular rhythm of the branches, painted with luminous energy, softens the angular geometry of the buildings behind them, capturing the fleeting glimmer of sunlight in a quiet London street. As the title suggests, Back Garden, Camden Town evokes a duality—between the natural and the urban, the private and the public. Selim’s palette, rich in both warm and muted tones, recalls the innovations of European modernism, particularly those of artists he greatly admired during his travels: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Henry Moore.
Selim’s European sojourn, and especially his years in London at the close of the 1940s, provided a vital foundation for the mature style he developed upon returning to Baghdad. There, in 1951, he co-founded the Baghdad Group for Modern Art, a movement that sought to reconcile modernist expression with indigenous cultural identity. Among the group’s followers were many of the leading figures of Iraq’s burgeoning modern art and literary scene, including Shakir Hassan Al-Said and Dia Al-Azzawi, as well as the Palestinian writer and critic Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. Jabra, a close interlocutor of Selim’s ideas, wrote extensively on his modernist vision and later published the artist’s biography in 1974 in Baghdad.
Although Jewad Selim’s life was cut tragically short in his early forties, he remains one of the few Arab artists to have engaged deeply with modern Western art while developing a profoundly original response to it. His legacy endures not only in his own body of work but also in the generations of Iraqi artists he inspired to explore modernism through the lens of their own cultural heritage.