Nadira Azzouz (1927-2020) was an Iraqi female contemporary artist. Highly prolific, she produced abstract, abstract figurative, and abstract landscape paintings throughout her lifetime. Her work was inspired by ancient Arab illuminated manuscripts, Arab verses, and Sumerian and Assyrian architecture and art.

Early Life & Education

She was born in Mosul, Iraq, as the eldest of 11 children, and began painting aged six. From 1944 she studied at the School of Domestic Fine Arts in Baghdad and graduated in 1949. She went to London in 1957 to study at the Central School of Art and Design where she was awarded a BA in Painting in 1960, and she also studied Still Life & Freehand Drawing in Cambridge.

Career

Nadira Azzouz is considered one of the pioneers of Iraqi abstract art during the 1950s. She had her first solo exhibition at the Headquarters of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1960. Following this, she joined the newly founded Iraqi Plastic Artists Society and took part in all their exhibitions, both in Iraq and internationally, during the 1960s. This included exhibitions at the Al-Wasiti Art Gallery in Baghdad in 1966, Iraq, at the Woodstock Gallery, London, England in the same year, and at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1968.

She married in 1946 and in 1970 she moved with her husband to Beirut, Lebanon where she painted and exhibited including solo exhibitions at Gallery One, Beirut in 1965 and 1974. In 1980, she moved to London, with her work being included in the influential ‘Arab Women Artists in the UK’ exhibition held by the Kufa Gallery in 1988. She continued to work and frequently exhibit internationally until her death in 2020. She is survived by her son, Mazen Azzouz (b.1966).

Critical Response

In 1984, author Jabra Ibrahim Jabra wrote in ‘The Grass Roots of Iraqi Art’, "Calligraphic expression in Nadira Azzouz’s paintings depends very much on the meaning of the Arabic verses she uses; the images seem to emerge from the words themselves.  She does not quite illustrate, but rather she allows the visual to capture the oral and expand it.  There is something peculiarly feminine not only in her choice of words, but in her choice of colour and composition as well, explicable perhaps in the context of an Iraqi woman’s passions.  Things akin to burning coals suddenly glow and let off sparks through a brazier full of ashes”.  This late use of writing has come to Nadira after a long period of abstract expressionism in which she was almost unique among her Iraqi contemporaries.  For her, painting has often been a communication with inner visions, inner eruptions to which no figure or word could do justice, hence her emphasis and resourceful play on colour.  In her recent work one can see her striving after a more lyrical, more diaphanous effect, suggestive of technical mastery."

Stories Art Gallery in London, England, wrote, "For her, painting has often been a communication with inner visions and eruptions to which no figure or word could do justice, hence her emphasis and resourceful play on color."

In 2022, she was the topic of 'Remembering the Artist', a retrospective article on Middle Eastern artists in The National UAE, sourced and written by the journalist and art critic Myrna Ayad.

Her work is collected internationally by private collectors, and several paintings selected by Sultan Al Qassemi are in the collection of The Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, in the Ibrahimi Collection in Baghdad, Iraq and Amman, Jordan, and in the Associazione Genesi Collection in Milan, Italy.

Selected Exhibitions

1960 - solo exhibition at The Headquarters of the Red Crescent, Baghdad, Iraq.

1965 - solo exhibition at Gallery One, Beirut, Lebanon.

1966 - Al-Wasiti Art Gallery, Baghdad, and Woodstock Gallery, London, England.

1968 - solo exhibition at the Gulbenkian Foundation, Baghdad, Iraq.

1972 – Contemporary Iraqi Art Exhibition, Hall of the National Museum of Modern Art, Baghdad, Iraq.

1974 - solo exhibition at Gallery One, Beirut, Lebanon.

1981 - Al-wiyah Club, Baghdad, Iraq.

1988 - ‘Arab Women Artists In The UK’, Kufa Gallery, London, England.

2005 - Kufa Gallery, London, England.

2013 - 'East Meets West', solo exhibition, the Westbank Gallery, London, England.

2015 - The Gallery, Art & Wine Kenilworth, England.

2017 – solo exhibition at Mar Behnam Church, Khidr Ilyas, Iraq.

2021 –  online solo exhibition “Reflections & Retrospective, Janet Rady Fine Art, London, England.

2022 - online solo exhibition, “Moments In Time”, Janet Rady Fine Art, London, England.

2023 - online solo exhibition, "Are We There Yet?", Janet Rady Fine Art, London, England.