“As for the stylized curvilinear depiction of the subject, the moon was Selim’s source of inspiration. The painting is an example of the artist’s series Al-Hilaliyat (of crescents, or crescent-based) from the early 1950s, which merged into the later series Al-Baghdadiyat, two paradigmatic bodies of work that attest to his attempts to capture, abstract, translate, and re-present elements from local heritage.”

Publication: “To See an Eclipse: Crescents in Jewad Selim’s Baghdadi Modernism,” Smarthistory (August 2024).

Keywords: research, scholarship, art, modern, modernism, artist, Jewad Selim, Baghdad Group for Modern Art, BGMA, movement, painting, drawing, sketch, heritage, tradition, local, colors, patterns, abstraction, figuration, Yahya Al-Wasiti, Maqamat Al-Hariri, Assyrian, Mesopotamian, relief, sculpture, wife, husband, married, Baghdadi, couple, Slade School, London, Rome, Paris, post-colonial, post-WWII, twentieth, 20th, century, modernization, development, transformations, history, historiography, archive, memory, Baghdad, Iraq, South West Asia, Arab world

Image: Jewad Selim, Smarthistory