Khaled al-Rahal


Khaled Al-Rahal was an Iraqi painter and sculptor and one of the leaders of the modern art movement in Iraq. Described as one of the "pillars of modern Iraqi art," he was responsible for executing a number of high-profile public monuments in Baghdad in the mid-20th century.

Life and career

Born in Baghdad in 1926 into a poor family, Khaled al-Rahal grew up on Baghdad's streets and alleyways which became an important influence on his life and art. He was an acute oberver of daily Iraqi life, and a regular visitor to the Iraqi Museum, established in 1939, where he showed great interest in Iraq's ancient sculptures, particularly Assyrian and Mesopotamian reliefs. Even before he studied art academically, his sculpture had developed a mature artistic vision, grounded in Mesopotamian art traditions.
During the second world war, he was just a teenager when the first signs of an art revival began in Baghdad. A group of Polish artists, mainly impressionists, had sought refuge in Baghdad, where they introduced local artists to European art. While, this created considerable enthusiasm for modern abstract art, it also left many local artists, including al-Rahal, searching for a way to integrate their ancient art traditions within modern, abstract artworks.
Throughout the 1940s, al-Rahal maintained a studio in Baghdad's commercial district, where he made and sold busts of the Iraqi monarch and other works, all of which were very popular with the public. The Iraqi artist, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, described his visit to al-Rahal's studio in the following terms:
At war's end, al-Rahal, by then in his early twenties, was part of a small group of talented, local artists who were granted scholarships to study art at the Baghdad Fine Arts Institute or abroad in either Paris or Rome. Al-Rahal received his earliest formal education at Baghdad Institute of Fine Arts under the supervision of the eminent Iraqi sculptor, Jawad Saleem, graduating with a Diploma in Sculpting in 1947.
Like many of his contemporaries, al-Rahal started out by working for the Iraq Museum under the Director of Antiquities, Naji al-Asil in the 1950s, where he was employed to make replicas of Iraq's ancient art pieces. During this period, he was commissioned to reproduce a bust of Sumerian Queen, Shuba'ad. He dressed her in royal jewellery from the Cemetery at Ur. The bust went on public display at the Museum, where it became an iconic image of Iraq's Sumerian past. Replicas of the bust were sold in tourist outlets and the figure became one of the most reproduced images in Iraqi art, being used on postcards, posters, souvenirs and in popular art.
In 1953 al-Rahal joined Jama’et Baghdad lil Fen al-Hadith founded in 1951, by his friend and mentor, Jawad Saleem, along with the artist and intellectual, Shakir Hassan Al Said. The group, which would have a far-reaching impact on Iraqi art sought to bridge the gap between modernity and tradition, by developing a distinctive Iraqi art aesthetic which employed modern techniques, but at the same time referenced its ancient heritage and tradition. Hassan, the group's leader promoted the idea of istilham al-turath – "seeking inspiration from tradition" and wrote a manifesto for the group. Al-Khalel was an ardent admirer of Jawad Saleem and committed to his ideals.
In the early 1960s, he was awarded another scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, which further exposed him to the fundamentals of European sculpture. He obtained a Master of Fine Arts in 1964. He remained in Rome throughout most of the 1960s, and produced several public works for the city of Rome.
Around the time of his return to Baghdad, the reigning monarch was murdered, the monarchy abolished and a republic established. While many artists fled Iraq at this time, al-Khaled decided to remain in Baghdad. The Ba'ath party became an important patron of the arts, and encouraged local visual artists to demonstrate a cultural connection between modern Iraqi people and ancient Sumerian peoples.. Under, Saddam Hussein, the Ba'ath Party co-opted the Baghdad Modern Art Group because its objectives aligned with their vision of a National Arab identity. Artists who were members of Baghdad's art groups were offered lucrative positions at the Ministry of Culture. Sculptors, architects and engineers, in particular, benefited from Hussein's program to beautify the city of Baghdad as numerous public art works were commissioned. These works were designed to instil a sense of national pride within the population, as well as to immortalise the leader, Saddam Hussein.
Al-Khaled, who more than any other artist, incorporated ancient Iraqi motifs in his artwork, flourished in Ba'athist Iraq. Throughout the 1970s, he designed several monuments commemorating historic Iraqi figures including: Abu Jafar al-Mansour, the 8th-century Abbasid Caliph and founder of Baghdad, the Lady of the Marshes, the March of the Ba'ath and Abd al-Karim Qasim, the Iraqi brigadier who overthrew the monarchy and established a republic in 1958 and also executed sculptures of everyday people such as Shaqawiyya and the Mother and Child statue.
He became Saddam Hussein's favourite sculptor and ultimately designed many of important, large-scale public monuments. In 1973, he was commissioned to design the March of the Ba'ath Monument a fountain with bronze relief that narrated most of Iraq's history.
Following the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein once again turned to his preferred sculptor to design two victory monuments; The Monument to the Unknown Soldier and the Swords of Qādisīyah (popularly known as the Victory Arch, both to be located at Zawra Park in remembrance of Iraq's pain and suffering during the war. The original concept for the Monument to the Unknown Soldier was Al-Khaled's original work, whereas the concept for the Victory Arch originated with Hussein while al-Kahal was left to work out the detailed design, always working in close collaboration with Hussein. The designs for both monuments included ancient and modern Arabic symbols of victory. The Monument to the Unknown Soldier was completed in 1982, but the Victory Arch was to be the sculptor's final work. The sculptor died before it was completed and his friend and assistant, Mohammed Ghani Hikmat, was left to finish the work.
Khaled al-Rahal died in Baghdad in 1986 and is buried beside the Monument of the Unknown Soldier.

Work

Al-Rahal has been described as Iraq's "most gifted sculptor." Kahalid al-Kishtyan, of the Iraqi Cultural Centre in London, described al-Rahal and his mentor, Jawad Salim, as "the two pillars of modern Iraqi art."
Al-Rahal's work was influenced by the sculptures of early Mesopotamian civilization, particularly those of Babylon and Assyria, and a characteristic feature of his busts and sculptures is that they have the same structure and facial features as the ancient figures. In an interview with the Government Daily, al-Rahhal expressed the view that the Iraqi people were the direct offspring of the ancient Sumerians, and was quoted:
For sculptures, he worked primarily in wood, plaster and metal. His themes are people of the streets and alleys, the poor men and women of everyday life as well as historic characters. Although he trained as a sculptor, Al-Rahal also enjoyed painting and exhibited many of these. However, a number of works on display at the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art were subject to the extensive looting that occurred following the US invasion of 2003.
During his lifetime, he produced an impressive body of large scale public works. However, not all of al-Rahal's monumental works have survived the various wars and revolutions befalling Iraq. Two of his public works were dismantled in the aftermath of the US invasion of 2003; one was his bust of Abu Jafar al-Mansur, the 8th-century Abbasid Caliph and founder of Baghdad and the other was the fountain known Nasb al-Maseera formerly in Mathaf Square, both dismantled in October, 2005. Paintings and smaller sculptures are now in the National Art Gallery of Modern Art, Baghdad, in Moscow, New York, Shanghai, Paris, Rome, Venice, Lucca and Messina. Many of his works held at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Baghdad were looted in 2003.

Brief description of major public works

; Nasb al-Maseera
; Mother and Child
; Abu Jafar al-Mansour
; The Unknown Soldier's Monument
; Swords of Qādisīyah, also known as the Victory Arch
; Abd al-Karim Qasim's statue

Select list of smaller sculptures