Who We Are
Ibrahimi Collection for Iraqi Fine Art is a private collection based in Amman, Jordan and Baghdad, Iraq, founded by Iraqi businessman and medical doctor, Hasanain Al-Ibrahimy. It is sponsored, supported, and supervised by AGMEST Group for Investment and Development (www.agmest.com), which is a group of Iraqi and Jordanian companies and scientific bureaus working in the field of supply and after-sales services of medical equipment and technologies, pharmaceutical distribution, and hospitals engineering in Iraq for the past 30 years.
Ibrahimi Collection focuses on collecting and documenting Iraqi modern and contemporary artworks to preserve and maintain the rich heritage of Iraqi art. It aims to raise awareness on art in Iraq from its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century right up to the present day by publishing, documenting, and promoting the products and endeavors of Iraqi plastic artists on the Internet in the hope to reach museums, art collectors, galleries, international auctions, artists, and others, and to serve as one of the main frames of reference for anyone wishing to learn, write about, or study the history and reality of modern and contemporary art in Iraq. This constitutes the collection of artworks acquired and by the archive library associated with the collection, which contains artistic publications such as books, magazines, articles, exhibition catalogs, etc. Ibrahimi Collection supports scholars, academics, art foundations, and museums by providing them with documents, archival information, and images, and by lending its artworks.
Ibrahimi Collection has a working team of Iraqi and Jordanian staff based in Amman and Baghdad that contribute to the development of the website and archiving of the publishing of Iraqi fine art within a mission of a long-term program to contribute to looking after the rich heritage of Iraqi modern and contemporary art.
Ibrahimi Collection’s quest is to create a distinctive archive that aims to preserve its legacy, the work that needs a lot of contributions and support of the Iraqi fine art and cultural community. One of the purposes of this Collection is to raise awareness of the creativity of modern and contemporary fine art without tendency or preference for specific artists or critics on the account of others. In this sense, the Collection welcomes any positive contributions, cultural and artistic, to enrich its contents and is in line with its objectives and purposes.
Adding to that, IWAN Art Co. has been established, which will be responsible for supporting, editing, and publishing books and publications within the above-mentioned domain, holding seminars, curating exhibitions, and contributing to the activities that consolidate and develop the voluntary cultural mission.
The cultural project needs the experience and supervision of an Advisory Board composed of those distinguished by their striking presence, distinctive impact, steady effectiveness, and influence in the cultural, artistic, and academic community inside and outside Iraq. Therefore, Ibrahimi Collection asked an elite selection of Iraqi artists and academics to be on its Advisory Board. They agreed to do so without any financial or commercial benefits. It is a purely professional, academic, and voluntary effort to help in the success and development of this project. All those who contributed to the promotion of the status and presence of fine and cultural Iraqi art, from Iraqis, and Arabs to non-Arabs, deserve to be mentioned, appreciated, and praised.
One of the objectives of this project is to raise awareness and spread Iraqi art to Arabic and non-Arabic speakers. Therefore, the primary language of the site is English. And from that, the site regularly connects with hundreds of people around the world who are interested in modern and contemporary art.
Any serious and constructive artistic or critical contribution to develop and enrich this project is welcome as this is an excellent opportunity to be a window to the creativity of generations of Founders, Pioneers, and Contemporary Artists who influenced the Iraqi cultural and artistic attempts and journey.
Ibrahimi Collection’s selection is purely based on its judgment, expressing its own opinion and taste.
Any positive contribution to its growth and development will be publicized and framed alongside our thanks, appreciation, and gratitude. Ibrahimi Collection hopes that this initiative will encourage the business community and Iraqi companies to follow their model and begin supporting Iraq's culture and art community. Each company or businessman in the private sector will have a role in developing, encouraging, and enriching Iraqi creativity and achievements.
Vision
To build a museum for the collection that will serve as a frame of reference for modern art in Iraq.
Mission
To strive to place modern art in Iraq in its rightful context among the artistic output of other countries through communications, cultural, and artistic exchanges.
Strategies Tactics & Approaches
• Communicating the products of modern Iraqi art and promoting them within the international art community.
• Creating and enriching the collection with additional works and expanding the library specializing in Iraqi and Arab plastic arts.
• Maintaining, improving, and promoting the collection’s website. Selecting and publishing articles on our website, expanding publications on plastic arts, and increasing the bilingual electronic archive to serve this purpose.
• Standardizing administrative practices in the field of modern art by promoting a practical and professional package of managerial and executive procedures and applications, which through their application, may improve the current situation.
Our Advisory Board
Whom we usually refer to for illumination and information about the affairs of the Iraqi Modern and Contemporary Art (IMCA) for advise, consultation, guidance and their expert opinions about the art works in our collection.
Mr. Maath Alousi:
http://www.maathalousi.com/about.htm
Born in Baghdad 1938 he has a Bachelor of Architecture from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey and the Architectural Association Diploma (Tropical Studies), United Kingdom.
Maath Al-Alousi is founder, Principal/Senior Partner for Alousi Associates Technical Studies Bureau , Baghdad, Iraq, and Alousi Associates Technical Studies Ltd., Limassol, Cyprus. He has forty two years of experience in the planning, design and project management of residential, commercial, industrial and governmental projects throughout the Middle East.
He is a member of the Iraqi Architects Society and the Iraqi Engineers Union. He has lectured at the Higher Institute of Technology, Baghdad, and the University of Technology, Baghdad, where he was also External Examiner for M.Sc. degree projects in urban design.
He has written numerous research papers and has contributed and edited several publications and periodicals on traditional houses of Baghdad and on Islamic and Iraqi architecture.
Artist Dia Azzawi:
Artist Dia AZZAWi was Born in Baghdad in 1939. Dia Azzawi started his artistic career in 1964, after graduating from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad and completing a degree in archaeology from Baghdad University in 1962.
In 1969, Azzawi (with Rafa Nasiri, Mohammad Muhriddin, Ismail Fattah, Hachem al-Samarchi and Saleh al Jumaie) formed the New Vision group (al-Ru’yya al-Jadidah), uniting fellow artists ideologically and culturally as opposed to stylistically. Through his involvement with the New Vision group Azzawi found inspiration in contemporary subjects and issues, particularly the plight of the Palestinians. He was also briefly a member of Shakir Hassan Al Said’s One Dimension group (Jama’t al-Bu’d al-Wahid).
From 1968 to 1976, Azzawi was the director of the Iraqi Antiquities Department in Baghdad. He has lived in London since 1976, where he served as art advisor to the city’s Iraqi Cultural Centre, from 1977 to 1980. Azzawi’s move to London led him to rediscover book art (dafatir), an art form that he has encouraged other artists from Iraq and the region to explore.
With exhibitions of his work held his art features in international private and public collections including the Museums of Modern Art in Baghdad, Damascus and Tunis; Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; Kinda Foundation, Saudi Arabia; Una Foundation, Casablanca; Arab Monetary Fund, Abu Dhabi; Development Fund, Kuwait; Jeddah International Airport; British Museum, Tate Modern, and Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Institut du Monde Arabe, Bibliothèque Nationale de France and Colas Foundation, Paris; Harba Collection, Iraq and Italy; Gulbenkian Collection, Barcelona; and Library of Congress and the World Bank, Washington, DC.
Mrs. May Muzaffar
Born in Baghdad, B.A. English literature,Baghdad University.Full time writer, living and working in Amman, Jordan. Poet, short story writer,art critic and translator. Sponsor of Rafa Nasiri Studio Amman. Sponsor of Rafa Nasiri Annual Award for Graphic Arts, initiated 2014. Published books in Baghdad, Beirut and Amman.
Authored, since 1970: 6 collections of poetry. 5 collections of short stories, 6 Books translated from English to Arabic, related to art and literature. Safarun fil -Mada, on life and work of Prof. Nasser Din al Assad, Beirut 1998. Rafa Nasiri, His Life and Art, by Sabah al Nasiri and May Muzaffar, Beirut 2010, Story of Water and Fire, Rafa Nasiri and May Muzaffar, Beirut 2021, Rafa Nasiri, The Cosmic Painter, Beirut 2010, Modern Art in Iraq, Continuity and Differentiation, Beirut 2015. The Manifestations of Arabic Letter in Rafa Nasiri Art Works- Misk Art Institute-Riyadh (S.A.-Pub by Rizzoli-Italy 2021. English and Arabic.
Editor: The Artistic Memoires of Surgeon and Artist Dr. Khaled al Qassab, Arabic, London 2007. Rafa Nasiri, 50 Years of Printmaking, Skira Milano. 2013-English, Rafa Nasiri Artist Books, with Sonjia Mejcher Atassi, SKIRA 2016 – English. Rafa Nasiri, The River and I, Baghdad 2014 - Arabic, Rafa Nasiri 50 Years between East and West, (collected and edited) Beirut 2018. Essays and articles (English) published in collective books: Modern Art in Iraq, Roots and Development: Iraq, History, People and Politics, ed. Shams Inati, Humanity Books, USA 2000. Art in Iraq Today, published by Meem Gallery, Dubai, 2011. Articles and essays on art and poetry presented in different cultural events and seminars, in Arabic and English.
Dr. Nada Shabout
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nada_Shabout
Dr. Nada Shabout Born 1962 , she was trained in architecture at the New York Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Arlington and the Architectural Association School of Architecture , London, England. She has also earned BFA fine arts, MA and PhD in the Humanities with a concentration in art history and criticism from the University of Texas at Arlington, 1999.
Dr. Nada Shabout is a Professor of Art History and the Coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative (CAMCSI) at the University of North Texas. She is the founding president of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art from the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA). She was the Consulting Director of Research at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, and the editor-in-chief of the Mathaf Encyclopedia of Modern Art and the Arab World. In 2010, she led Mathaf’s curatorial team of the inaugural exhibition Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art, and curated one of the two accompanying opening exhibitions, Interventions: A dialogue between the Modern and the Contemporary. She has co-curated with Zainab Bahrani Modernism and Iraq at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, 2009, and curated the traveling exhibition, Dafatir: Contemporary Iraqi Book Art, 2005-2009.
She has published numerous articles on modern and contemporary Arab and Iraqi art and the relationship of identity and visual representations in Iraq. She is the author of Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics, University of Florida Press, 2007; co-editor with Salwa Mikdadi of New Vision: Arab Art in the 21st Century, Thames & Hudson, 2009; and currently co-editing with Anneka Lenssen and Sarah Rogers the forthcoming volume Modern Art of the Arab World: Primary Documents, part of the International Program at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017.
She is the founder and project director of the Modern Art Iraq Archive (MAIA); a former member of the editorial committee of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) and of the International Editorial Advisory Board and subject editor for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism (REM). Her awards include: The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII) fellow 2006, 2007; MIT visiting Assistant Professor, spring 2008, and Fulbright Senior Scholar Program, 2008 Lecture/Research fellowship to Jordan.
Artist Ali Talib
Artist Ali Talib was Born 1944, Basra, Iraq ,studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad, receiving his BA in Painting in 1966. . Talib was a founding member of the Innovationists and after moving to his birthplace, Basra, for a short time. He formed the Shadow Group; he was also a member of the New Vision Group. He went on to study graphic design at Helwan University, Cairo, where he received his MA in 1980. Talib held his first solo exhibition at Mubarakia Gallery, Kuwait, in 1964, while he was still a student at the Academy. Further solo shows include National Museum of Modern Art, Baghdad, 1976; Gallery d'Art 50x70, Beirit, 1994; De Vrije Academie, The Hague, 2003; United Nation Humans Settlements Programme, Barcelona, 2004; Green Art Gallery, Dubai, 2008; and Karim Gallery, Amman, 2009. He has also participated in biennales and triennales as well as major group shows including Four Iraqi Artists, Alif Gallery, Washington, DC, 1994; Cité International des Arts Exhibition, Paris, 2004; Iraqi Artists in Exile, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas, 2009, and Art in Iraq Today (with fellow New Vision members Dia Azzawi and Rafa Nasiri), Meem Gallery, Dubai, 2011. In 1986 he was awarded First Prize at the First Baghdad International Festival of Plastic Arts and First Prize at the Second Sharjah Biennale, in 1995. His work is held in collections including Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha and Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman.
Dr.Ihsan Fethi
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=Ihsan%20Fethi
studied Architecture and Urban Planning in the United Kingdom in 1960 obtaining a PhD in Architecture in 1977 after years of study and research. He later became a Professor of Architecture, Urban Planner, and Heritage Conservation Expert and accordingly held many distinguished academic positions including Chairman of School of Architecture in Baghdad from1986-1991. Dean of the College of Architecture and Art in Petra University, Amman 1993-95, Dean of the College of Engineering and Design, in Bayan University, Abu Dhabi, 1997-99, and Dean of the College of Arts, in Amman University, 2000-2007, in addition to being the Founder of the Architectural Heritage Section at the Baghdad Municipality from1982-86 and a member of the Supreme Committee of Cultural Heritage of Iraq.
He worked closely with prestigious cultural entities across the Middle East, Europe and the United States; he worked as a consultant to the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in Los Angeles, since 2005, and as a notable consultant with the World Monument Fund (WMF) in New York, since 2005. Dr. Fethi has also worked in the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) in Rome since 2007. Additionally, he worked as a consultant for the Iraqi Council of Culture, and the Orfali Art Gallery in Amman.
Driven by years of academic and professional regional and international experience Dr. Fethi produced dozens of publications including an autobiography, books and research papers on diverse modern and historical issues on Architecture, Art, Heritage and Culture.
Artist Saad Al-Tai:
Our Cultural Advisor Dr Ahmed Naji Al-SAID
Dr Ahmed Naji Al-SAID is a London-based independent researcher and cultural advisor specialising in modern and contemporary Iraqi art. Dr Naji focuses on research and documentation of public art, museums and private collections. He is the author of “Under the Palm Trees: Modern Iraqi Art with Mohamed Makiya and Jewad Selim” published by Rizzoli New York in May 2019. Advising the Ibrahimi Collection, Dr Naji Al-SAID will showcase, within diverse research themes, the comprehensive and methodical approach of the collection in preserving Iraqi cultural heritage, namely modern and contemporary Iraqi art and related publications.
Our Team
• Dr. Hasanian Al-Ibrahimy – Founder
• Areej Haider – Documentation Senior Officer / Team leader
• Salwan Faiz – Designer
• Maha Al-Ibrahimy - Marketing and P.R Officer
Founder Statement
Art is part of my being. I have always been drawn to fabulous painters that were able to bring my culture to life with a piece of canvas, a few brushes and some paint. My fascination and passion for the Arts, in particular the art of painting developed into what I would like to pursue in life as a collector, protector and developer of the Arts. It was an urge and a motivating source of tranquility, beauty and knowledge.
Throughout my life I have read many books on art directly dealing with art works that created within me a diverse sense of elegance, richness and fineness.
Then realizing that a reference to a vast national art collection of Iraq was missing and discovering that this art legacy has become scattered throughout the world was a further motivator to creating this art collection project.
This adventure of fine arts discovery has come by persistence, discussions and associating with the art community. It has made me feel more serene and diverse through the complicated, sophisticated, strenuous and tiring business life I lead and its challenges. Although trials may take up many efforts, resources and time, and we can never know if we will realize part or the whole of our vision, but maybe thru this project we can uphold the status of the Iraqi fine arts.
While searching out of curiosity about articles, books, publications talking about Iraqi modern art, over the searching engines, libraries, I notice a signification shortage of sources & materials for fine art literatures, this outcome astonished and even more disappointed me, this was another cause that motivated me more to initiate this website.
We have launched this website with the main purpose of archive and documenting Iraqi modern and contemporary art from its beginning in beginning of 20th century until now. The originator of this project is the collection of art works I have acquired over the past 30 years.
In addition to various artwork from painting, sculptures and ceramics of most Iraqi artists, and a few Arab artists this collection also includes a wide variety of art publications of the abstracts of the significant books that dealt with and discussed various topics of the Iraqi fine arts as well as magazines, exhibitions brochures, and books published by the artists themselves.
In this website there is space for each artist that includes his work, biography, books, videos and articles and we will continue to work on collecting and publishing all we can find, and are permitted to publish, to be available to interested artists, scholars, art collectors and art students. After enriching these pages, we plan to publish and distribute them to the interested museums, art collectors, researchers, artists and others, to be one of the important references for anyone who wants to read, write and study about Iraqi composition.
We believe that every work of art is a creative achievement that has its own story resulting from exceptional circumstances or suffering , and that its historical and cultural value will be more appreciated by the recipients and those concerned if they understand the background story of this achievement.
One would ask why this website set mainly in English language, the answer is so that it can reach a wide audience, to promote the artists of our collection that we couldn't find any significant reference to them on the web. Through this website we are trying to fill this gap.
The nature of the entire era imposes on the communities certain challenge if they would not take seriously then they will definitely miss their competitiveness. Apparently, there is a considerable gap not yet noticed managing the cultural & art achievements emerging from our region, particularly from Iraq .
This private project with its single resource would like to send a message, that passion dedication & perseverance to serve goals & objectives can do something.
Certainly we are interested in opening a responsible & earnest dialogue on ways to build on this project, to expand, enrich & disseminate the cultural & art accomplishment of the Middle East, including Iraq, to extend the peace & solidarity message through love & beauty to the entire world.
Dr. Hasanain Al-Ibrahimy
Ibrahimi Collection Founder
Values to Iraqi fine arts & artist
We have noticed through our contact with artists, critics, and promoters of artworks in the region and in Iraq in particular there are no statistics or confirmations about the Iraqi art works because they were never documented properly. Therefore these artworks are not easily authenticated published or claimed.
We have also noticed that not enough attention is paid to the provenance of these artworks which is an important part in the process of authenticating and evaluating any art piece .
We at Ibrahimi Collection have taken it upon ourselves to shed light on the importance of these issues through our meetings and dealing with our art associates.
To assist in our cause we have build an extensive digital database on our artists and their artworks, in addition to a large archive of old and new publications and books in the field of art to support in achieving the above mentioned goals.
Provenance:
We have worked hard to document the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of the works of art we collect, the primary purpose of tracing the provenance of an object or entity is normally to provide contextual and circumstantial evidence of its original production or discovery, by establishing, as far as realistic, its later history, especially the sequences of its formal ownership, custody, and places of storage. This practice has a particular value in helping to authenticate objects. Yet we faced and are still facing many challenges of insufficient documentation and the humble archive of the national cultural and art patrimony in the public sector and even so with the art dealers, galleries and collectors. Our approach to build up our own authentication and provenance is directed by the following:
Since there isn’t a trustworthy official authentication party in Iraq to authenticate the artwork, we at Ibrahimi collection have established our own methodology for Authentication & provenance first by employing a committee of experts to authenticate our collection through certificates issued signed and stamped by them.
We have also devised a grading system for evaluating the assurance of authentication with weights on the following:
