This 1953 painting by celebrated Iraqi painter and sculptor Jewad Selim exhibits the artist’s abstracted, two-dimensional approach to form and rhythmic use of the crescent and square. As one of the founders of the Baghdad Group for Modern Art (1951), along with his student and friend Shakir Hassan Al Said, Selim and his colleagues sought to forge a modern art through a process of cultural renewal that was oriented towards the rediscovered local tradition of the 13th century style of manuscript illumination exemplified by Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti in the Maqamat of al-Hariri, the most popular Arabic text chosen for illustration in medieval Iraq. Critical to their vision of a contemporary art was experimentation with various traditions and techniques, including the art of Pablo Picasso, who is explicitly referenced in the Group’s 1951 manifesto. Visual continuity between the past and present was thus part of this pioneering vision of istilham al-turath, “[seeking] inspiration from tradition.” Woman Selling Material, painted just two years after the founding of the artists’ collective, combines a playful linear construction, surface flatness due to a lack of shading, and interest in geometry that marks Selim’s openness to different influences and a dynamic interplay of various visual traditions.

During his short career, Selim left an imprint as a pioneer of Iraq’s modern art movement. In 1938, he studied in Paris on a government scholarship, relocating to Rome two years later after the German invasion of France in the Second World War. Selim studied sculpture at London’s Slade School of Fine Art between 1946 and 1949. Returning to Baghdad soon afterwards, Selim founded the Institute of Fine Arts’ sculpture department. Selim obtained a grant to construct the Monument of Freedom memorial for Iraq’s 1958 revolution (which still stands in Baghdad), but died of a heart attack before its completion.