Ismail Fattah-Al-Turk (Iraq, 1934-2004, attributed to)Untitled, signed and dated 1979Lost-wax bronze sculpture 37.5 ...

Ismail Fattah-Al-Turk (Iraq, 1934-2004, attributed to)Untitled, signed and dated 1979Lost-wax bronze sculpture 37.5 X 18.5 cm
Born in Basra, the artist graduated in painting and sculpture from the Baghdad Academy of Fine Arts in 1958 and was a follower of Jewad Selim, a pioneer of the Iraqi modernist movement. From 1961 to 1964, Al Fattah perfected his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and at the Accademia di San Giacomo, also in Rome, where he also studied ceramics. In the second half of the 1960s, he returned to Iraq and began his career as a teacher of sculpture and ceramics. At the forefront of the promotion of Middle Eastern art in the world, Fattah was also a founding member of the New Vision group founded in 1969 as an artistic reworking of the concepts of Pan Arabism spread in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli wars. The artist is also well known in Iraq for the realisation of grandiose public commissions, including the monument celebrating Iraq's two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and the Martyrs' Monument (1983), which was created with propaganda intentions and is now considered the symbol of modern Iraqi visual culture. The twists and forms of the war memorial are reminiscent of those in the model shown here, which is an artist's proof, signed and dated 1979, thus four years before the monument was created.