Madiha Omar

Collection of the Artist, New York
Private Collection, New York (acquired directly in the 1980s)
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in the 1990s.

Condition: This work is in a very good condition. No sign of restoration under the UV light. Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is accurate, with the overall tonality being more vivid and less yellow in the original work.
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Born in 1908 in Aleppo when it was under the Ottoman Empire, Madiha Omar came to be known in history as one of the pioneering female artists of the Iraqi modernist period.  

Born in Syria, naturalised Iraqi, she established the One Dimension Art movement in 1971 alongside her fellow artists, Shakir Hassan Al Said, Jamil Hamoudi and Rafa Nasiri. As a group of artists, they wrote a manifesto entitled Al Bu’ad al Wahid (One Dimension) which deliberated on how to approach abstraction in visual arts with ties to the local Arabic scriptures. The aim was not to revive Islamic ancient calligraphy but to give asala (authenticity) to the form of the letter. Like the Baghdad Modern Art Group, the One Dimension manifesto aimed to reinterpret the traditions of the ancient Mesopotamian culture. At a period of social and political change, it was critical to the group to rediscover a national idiom, as part of a new national dialogue embedded in the nation’s cultural identity.  Nonetheless, the group didn’t declare a political indemnity with the rise of nationalism in the 1970s during the Saddam era.  

Madiha Omar’s work is regarded as the precursor to Hurufiyah, a trend that was particularly popular amongst Arab artists during the 1960s and 1970s, as she was one of the first artists to explore the formal qualities of the Arabic letter in contemporary art in 1944. Liberating the letter from traditional forms and allowing it to flow into geometric design was the main purpose of this genre. She believed that the Arabic letter had so many dynamic elements in it that it could produce an abstract image.

From the 1950 to the 1980s Omar held eighteen solo exhibitions. She also participated in numerous international art conferences and group exhibitions and her work was featured in modern Middle Eastern and Iraqi group shows such as Strokes of Genius: Contemporary Iraqi Art, Brunei Gallery, London, travelling exhibition, 2000–2002; Word into Art, British Museum, London, 2006; and Modernism and Iraq, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, 2009. The majority of her works are either found in travelling exhibitions or on permanent view at the National Museum of Baghdad; therefore, it is very rare for the artist’s work to appear at auction.