Iraqi artists-muralists, graduates of the USSR universities: graduation works as a synthesis of national and individual

Abstract

At the end of 1950s Iraq supported the idea of modernization and a boost of the level of education, sending a lot of young Iraqis to study abroad, including the USSR. The first Iraqi undergraduate and postgraduate students to study monumental art came to Moscow in the early 1960s. Mahmoud Sabri (1927–2012) joined the Vasily Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute in 1960, Shams al-Din Faris (1937–1983) and Ahmed al Numan (1939–2013) joined the Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts in 1961. The article addresses the three Iraqi artists graduation mural projects, their historical appearance and their political environments: Mahmoud Sabri’s Watani, 1962–1963; Shams al-Din Faris’s People’s Wedding, 1967 and Ahmed al Numan’s Celebrations of the Battle of Ashura, 1967. Three murals are apprehended through their origins, contexts of students’ relations and perceptions. The aim of this article is to answer various questions surrounding the historical framework of three murals — such as who, when, where and how they were created, why those works became a manifestation of students’ political and social experiences and hopes. The study is based on the previously unpublished archival material from the Vasily Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute, the Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts, the Ministry of Culture of the USSR and the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, as well as other archival material from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts (RGALI) and the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). The research was undertaken and written with the aid of the artists’ relatives and friends, based on the materials gathered through meetings, interviews and correspondence with them.