While Faik Hassan’s formal painting style was influenced by his studies in Europe, he was dedicated to celebrating Iraqi culture throughout his career and worked towards developing a national visual language. His work Bedouin Tent (1950) depicts a scene from the daily life of Iraqi peasants residing along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Two male figures are shown sitting in a tent, surrounded by objects which include the traditional dallah and finjan (coffee pot and cups). The work is rendered in a manner that collapses spatial depth and places the figures and objects onto several distinct planes, thus simultaneously offering a number of different viewpoints in the intimate scene. In doing so, the artist is able to accentuate the particularities of certain features in the composition, such as the shape of the yellow floor mat or the coffee pot spout, which he paints at unnatural angles. This work is part of Hassan’s broader interest in depicting everyday Iraqi life, and capturing the living conditions of villagers, workers, and farmers.
This is the first time the work of Faik Hassan is presented at Biennale Arte
—Suheyla Takesh
