哈立德·拉哈尔

Khaled Al-Rahal (also given as Khālid al-Raḥḥāl, 1926–1987) (Arabic: خالد الرحال) was an Iraqi painter and sculptor and one of the leaders of the modern art movement in Iraq. Described as one of the "pillars of modern Iraqi art," he was responsible for executing a number of high-profile public monuments in Baghdad in the mid-20th century.

Life and career

Born in Baghdad in 1926 into a poor family, Khaled al-Rahal grew up on Baghdad's streets and alleyways which became an important influence on his life and art. He was an acute observer of daily Iraqi life, and a regular visitor to the Iraqi Museum, established in 1939, where he showed great interest in Iraq's ancient sculptures, particularly Assyrian and Mesopotamian reliefs. Even before he studied art academically, his sculpture had developed a mature artistic vision, grounded in Mesopotamian art traditions.

During the Anglo-Iraqi War, he was just a teenager when the first signs of an art revival began in Baghdad. A group of Polish artists, mainly impressionists, had sought refuge in Baghdad, where they introduced local artists to European art. While, this created considerable enthusiasm for modern abstract art, it also left many local artists, including al-Rahal, searching for a way to integrate their ancient art traditions within modern, abstract artworks.

Throughout the 1940s, al-Rahal maintained a studio in Baghdad's commercial district, where he made and sold busts of the Iraqi monarch and other works, all of which were very popular with the public. The Iraqi artist, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, described his visit to al-Rahal's studio in the following terms:

"I shall never forget how one evening in 1948 (he was twenty-two then, and unknown), he took me to a tiny, shabby room in a small shabby house in one of Baghdad's oldest quarters, where we sat on a rush-mat and out of a battered chest he produced, like a magician, a pile of most beautiful drawings, many of which were studies for his sculpture. They were mostly drawings of women: in public baths, or belly-dancing or making love, all fat, full-fleshed, vibrating with the intensity of being alive."

At war's end, al-Rahal, by then in his early twenties, was part of a small group of talented, local artists who were granted scholarships to study art at the Baghdad Fine Arts Institute or abroad in either Paris or Rome. Al-Rahal received his earliest formal education at Baghdad Institute of Fine Arts under the supervision of the eminent Iraqi sculptor, Jawad Saleem, graduating with a Diploma in Sculpting in 1947.

Like many of his contemporaries, al-Rahal started out by working for the Iraq Museum under the Director of Antiquities, Naji al-Asil in the 1950s, where he was employed to make replicas of Iraq's ancient art pieces. During this period, he was commissioned to reproduce a bust of Sumerian Queen, Shuba'ad. He dressed her in royal jewelry from the Cemetery at Ur. The bust went on public display at the Museum, where it became an iconic image of Iraq's Sumerian past. Replicas of the bust were sold in tourist outlets and the figure became one of the most reproduced images in Iraqi art, being used on postcards, posters, souvenirs and in popular art.

In 1953 al-Rahal joined Jama’et Baghdad lil Fen al-Hadith (The Baghdad Modern Art Group) founded in 1951, by his friend and mentor, Jawad Saleem, along with the artist and intellectual, Shakir Hassan Al Said. The group, which would have a far-reaching impact on Iraqi art sought to bridge the gap between modernity and tradition, by developing a distinctive Iraqi art aesthetic which employed modern techniques, but at the same time referenced its ancient heritage and tradition. Hassan, the group's leader promoted the idea of istilham al-turath – "seeking inspiration from tradition" and wrote a manifesto for the group. Al-Khalel was an ardent admirer of Jawad Saleem and committed to his ideals.

In the early 1960s, he was awarded another scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, which further exposed him to the fundamentals of European sculpture. He obtained a Master of Fine Arts in 1964. He remained in Rome throughout most of the 1960s, and produced several public works for the city of Rome.

Around the time of his return to Baghdad, the reigning monarch was murdered, the monarchy abolished and a republic established. While many artists fled Iraq at this time, al-Khaled decided to remain in Baghdad. The Ba'ath party became an important patron of the arts, and encouraged local visual artists to demonstrate a cultural connection between modern Iraqi people and ancient Sumerian peoples. Under, Saddam Hussein, the Ba'ath Party co-opted the Baghdad Modern Art Group because its objectives aligned with their vision of a National Arab identity. Artists who were members of Baghdad's art groups were offered lucrative positions at the Ministry of Culture. Sculptors, architects and engineers, in particular, benefited from Hussein's program to beautify the city of Baghdad as numerous public art works were commissioned. These works were designed to instil a sense of national pride within the population, as well as to immortalise the leader, Saddam Hussein.

Al-Khaled, who more than any other artist, incorporated ancient Iraqi motifs in his artwork, flourished in Ba'athist Iraq. Throughout the 1970s, he designed several monuments commemorating historic Iraqi figures including: Abu Jafar al-Mansour, the 8th-century Abbasid Caliph and founder of Baghdad, the Lady of the Marshes, the March of the Ba'ath and Abd al-Karim Qasim, the Iraqi brigadier who overthrew the monarchy and established a republic in 1958 and also executed sculptures of everyday people such as Shaqawiyya (an Arab girl from southern Iraq) and the Mother and Child statue.

He became Saddam Hussein's favourite sculptor and ultimately designed many of important, large-scale public monuments. In 1973, he was commissioned to design the March of the Ba'ath Monument a fountain with bronze relief that narrated most of Iraq's history.

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「Khaled al-Rahal」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。