Khalid Al-Jadir. Irak. Malerei und Handzeichnungen

Al-Jadir is one of the best known representatives of realistic painting and one of the most important art historians from Iraq of the 20th century. After studying art and law in Baghdad, he continued his studies at the Academy of Arts in Paris and earned a doctorate in the history of Islamic art. He returned to Iraq in 1954 and taught painting and art history at Baghdad University, among other places, until he founded the Academy of Fine Arts in 1961 and became its dean. The artist was represented with four works at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin as early as 1951 and in 1959 with his own exhibition at the Erich Weinert House in Pankow. In 1965/1966, he spent more than a year in East Germany for study purposes, resulting in a large number of sketches and paintings about landscapes and social life in the GDR. He showed these visualized impressions in an exhibition in Baghdad in 1970.

"Knowing the historical background of a culture where forces polarize in sharp disputes, the realistic principles of Dr. Khalid Al-Jadir's painting gain great importance. His delicate portraits of women, beautiful landscapes, and paintings of political events help promote the country's progress" [translation by Art in Networks] reads a newspaper article on the exhibition showing paintings and hand drawings by the artist in the Neue Berliner Galerie in 1977. (Ariane Beygang, Neue Zeit 19.04.1977, P. 4)

Reviews of exhibitions in the GDR have appeared in the Neue Zeit of 24.09.1959 and by Ariane Beygang in the Neue Zeit of 19.04.1977, as well as in the catalogue Malerei & Handzeichnungen. Khalid al-Jadir in Berlin from 1977.