Iraq

The birthplace of Arab modernism. In 1951, painter Jawad Saleem and critic Shakir Hassan Al Said founded the Baghdad Modern Art Group with a deliberate manifesto: to integrate the ancient Mesopotamian visual heritage — Sumerian forms, Assyrian relief, the calligraphic line — with the techniques of European modernism. The result was the most distinctive modernist tradition the Arab world produced, and the seed from which the Hurufiyya movement would later grow. Iraqi pioneers Faik Hasan, Hafez Al Droubi, Ismail Fatah Al Turk, Khaled Al Rahal, and Madiha Omar — a pioneer of Hurufiyya theory and one of the country's earliest internationally exhibited women artists — shaped a national art whose influence extends across the entire region. Iraqi modern art commands the highest auction prices of any Arab national school.