An Evolution of Style: Dia al-Azzawi works in the Dubai Collection
Author
Mysa Kafil-Hussain
Published
23 July 2022
The works by Dia al-Azzawi in the Dubai Collection provide a compelling overview of key developments and moments in Azzawi’s career since the mid-1960s. Born in Baghdad in 1939, Azzawi’s ongoing, limitless exploration of art includes painting, sculpting, printmaking, graphic design, digital art and more. His influences—ancient, medieval and modern, investigate the aesthetic, cultural and philosophical histories of pre-Islamic civilisations, the evolution of manuscript traditions, the legacies of heroes and martyrs, the impact of both ancient and modern Arabic poetry and the natural world. Perhaps inevitably, these influences also include Azzawi’s personal experiences and reflections on war, memory and injustice, especially as an artist in exile from his homeland, Iraq.
The featured artworks range from the early 1970s to 2007, covering a core period of his practice and crucial stages of Azzawi’s artistic and technical evolution. The Falling Dot (1972), an emblematic example of the bold and stark works Azzawi made in the early 1970s, is one of many pieces in the artist’s oeuvre inspired by Arabic poetry, notably the work of Muzaffar al-Nawab. Azzawi met Nawab in 1968, and was immediately captivated by readings of the latter’s poetry, pushing him to incorporate Nawab’s revolutionary words into his own visual expression, including paintings such as A Wolf Howls: Memories of a Poet (1968, now in the Barjeel Collection, Sharjah) and Husun al-Shamus (1970, in a private collection in Baghdad). Azzawi also designed the cover and created drawings for the first publication of Nawab’s L’il Rayl wa-Hamad (‘For the Train and Hamad’). The Falling Dot continues this exploration of Nawab’s verses, highlighting lines of his poetry in the centre of the painting. A development of earlier work that often included archaeological and ethnographic symbols, Azzawi adopted a minimalist style with a focus on a central detail, with his canvases from this period becoming vast spaces with large areas of uninterrupted solid colour, into which obscure quotes, letters and shapes merge, mysteriously alluding to the story of the central figure.
Dia al-Azzawi, 'The Falling Dot', 1972, courtesy of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Private Collection
After Azzawi moved to London in 1976, his experience of cultural dislocation led him back to Arabic literature, exploring the creative possibilities of Arabic script which manifested as striking works blending text and image, such as Arabic Letters (1979). This artwork straddles two eras of Azzawi’s work, as he continued to incorporate written text into visual motifs, while also moving into the Hurufiyya period, in which he deconstructed Arabic texts and focused on individual Arabic letters as a motif. In this particular composition, the shape that encases the letters may be inspired by the ancient Mesopotamian votive plaques, which Azzawi encountered during his archaeological studies and work at the Iraq Museum. The horizon behind the central shape is a visual reference that emerged in the mid-1970s after Azzawi spent many months of reservist duty in northern Iraq (1973–74). With little to do except observe the vast, rugged landscapes, Azzawi found himself looking longingly at the horizon: many of his subsequent works display this sense of depth and perspective across the land.
The return to Arabic literature also led Azzawi to study Islamic manuscripts in European capitals such as Paris, Dublin and London, resulting in the publication of limited edition facsimiles and an interest in creating dafātir (artist’s books) of his own. This desire to revive cultural history was built on Azzawi’s earlier interactions with Arabic literature: for example, he painted TheArabian Nights in the late 1960s, and also made a series of monoprints inspired by these stories (The Thousand and One Nights, 1986). Similarly, his work in the 1960s with the great Iraqi archaeologist, Taha Baqir, resulted in numerous drawings inspired by The Epic of Gilgamesh. Once again, Azzawi revisited the epic many years later, when he painted The Silent Man (1993–95), inspired by the story of Gilgamesh and Ishtar.
No stranger to bold and vivid palettes, the use of the colour red in Azzawi’s work is often symbolically associated with themes of love, passion, fear and death, which all feature in the story of Gilgamesh. He also pushed the limits of his canvases, creating larger artworks in triptych form, allowing space for stories to unfold, and began experimenting with migrating forms, translating his ideas into three dimensional mediums and playing with scale, often incorporating new textures and three-dimensional figures into his compositions, as seen in The Silent Man, where Azzawi attached a small and serene figure to the left-hand canvas, distinct from the colourful chaos emerging to his right. Azzawi’s experience of excavating, handling and conserving numerous Sumerian figurines led to his meticulous observations of the shapes, techniques and scale used to model the human body.
In the early 1990s, Azzawi was spending more time in the Arab world, especially Bahrain (where this work was exhibited in 1996) and Qatar, after meeting Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammed bin Ali Al Thani in 1994, who invited Azzawi to help him develop a collection for a museum of modern Arab art and open a studio in Doha. In the Gulf, Azzawi encountered a range of bright, patterned fabrics and prints from local and immigrant communities, reminding him of Bedouin production in Iraq and inspiring a dramatic shift in his use of colour.
After visiting the desert, Azzawi also began to look deeply into the revelations found within nature and became fascinated by a small crystalline phenomenon known as the “desert rose”. He first attempted to create the shape in wood before moving on to terracotta, which he later cast in a range of materials, including bronze, for example Desert Flower (2005, cast in 2007).
Azzawi was also inspired by the journey itself, and Voyager’s Trace No. 1 (2007) provides an insight into the mind of an explorer—not just of art, but of the world. In 1971, Azzawi wrote in al-Muthaqaf al-Arabi Magazine (vol. 3, no. 4): “I remain a travel[l]er, never settling down in one place… when a person travels, certainty is rejected and discoveries are made”. He saw himself as an individual whose mind and body are perpetually striving for discovery and transformation, and that being fixed in one location and mindset would hinder his freedom and imagination. In Voyager’s Trace No. 1, we get a clear sense of light breaking through, drawing a topographic map or outline of a journeyed route, while the black lines may be read by the viewer either as paths or obstacles. Azzawi painted other works during this period on the same theme, for example Old Map of Arabian Peninsula No. 2 (2007, in The AbdulMagid Breish Collection of Arab Art), in which he uses a similar palette to create an abstract map, interpreting old cartographic drawings of the region.
Known to the world as an innovator and a risk-taker, many overlook the methodical and considered approaches Azzawi takes in his work. From his earliest work in the Dubai Collection, a clear thematic and technical progression can be seen, while the range of his skill and the unlimited potential of his creative insight can be observed in paintings and sculptures alike. Inspired by a plethora of cultural, historical and natural concepts and experiences, Azzawi continues to make work for every era and every generation, without enforcing any form of spatial or geographical boundaries on his imagination.
The Dubai Collection Announces 279 New Artworks From 19 New Patrons Including 88 Artworks From His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum
Including the new additions, 406 artworks are now available to view on The Dubai Collection Digital Museum, featuring modern and contemporary artworks by 84 new artists.
