This work by celebrated Iraqi artist Shakir Hassan Al Said belongs to a series of mixed media, tactile works in which he suspends isolated Arabic letters (here, the waw) against abstracted compositions, suggestive of graffiti written on a concrete wall. In the mid-20th Century, a number of artists in the Arab region began exploring the Arabic letter as a source of inspiration and Al Said was chief among them. This painting, from a later period, represents the artist’s aesthetic theory, the One Dimension (founded in 1971) which explores the spiritual, dimensions of calligraphic representation and contemplates the dimensions of the pictorial surface. Incorporating philosophical sources such as Sufi thought and Deconstruction, Al Said’s approach to art making experimented with repetitive gestures and lacerations of pictorial surfaces as a way to transcend into the realm of the divine, considered the One Dimension.

Al Said was a prolific painter, sculptor, and writer whose work incorporates a range of influences, from international modernism to Arab-Islamic popular culture and Sufism. Al Said pursued painting at Baghdad’s Institute of Fine Art where he studied under Jewad Selim. In 1951, Al Said co-founded, with Selim, the Baghdad Group for Modern Art. In 1955, Al Said continued his studies in Paris, returning to Baghdad in 1959 to teach at the Institute of Fine Arts. His work is held in private collections and museums worldwide. Al Said died in Baghdad, in 2004.