Jewad Selim, a forerunner of Iraqi modernism, was born to a middle-class military family. He was influenced by his officer father, who had trained as a landscape painter in the Ottoman Military Academy. In Woman and a Jug (1957), Selim demonstrates the confluence of modern geometric abstraction at the intersection of Islamic, ancient Mesopotamian, and Western styles. In this work, the curved circular outlines of the figure’s face, arms, a coffee pot, and adjacent plant leaves convey the waxing stages of the moon from crescent to full, alluding to traditions associated with the Sumerian moon god Nanna, an important deity connected to fertility. In Islam, the moon represents spiritual wayfinding, and it is the system upon which the Muslim lunar calendar is based. Furthermore, in Islamic scriptures, the moon, or Qamar, references the miracle of the moon splitting performed by Prophet Muhammad, which foreshadows the day of judgement and division between believers and nonbelievers. Correspondingly, the angular properties of the dresser, atop which the figure and coffee pot rest, equate to 360 degrees, symbolising the concept of a complete circle.
—Sara Raza
