RAFA NASIRI (1940-2013)

Painter and printmaker Rafa Nasiri is widely-known in the Arab world and beyond for his culturally rich artworks and distinctive style. During the last decade, he was inspired by poetry as varied as that of Al-Mutanabbi, Mahmoud Darwish and Etel Adnan. This poetic journey, coupled with a preoccupation with the element of time, has produced works that celebrate beauty, love and the homeland. Born in Tikrit, Iraq in 1940, he studied painting and printmaking in Baghdad, Beijing and Lisbon. Beginning in 1963, he held over 35 solo exhibitions in the Middle East, Europe and the Far East and participated in numerous group exhibitions and international biennales around the world. Nasiri was awarded the First Prize at the Baghdad International Festival of Art in 1986; the Honors Prize at the 4th International Graphics Biennale, Fredrickstad, Norway in 1978; the Jury Prize at the International Painting Exhibition, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France in 1977; and the Honors Prize at the International Summer Academy, Salzburg, Austria in 1974. Nasiri published two books, in Arabic: Contemporary Graphic Art (1997) and Horizons and Mirrors: Essays on Plastic Art (2005). In 2010, a book about the artist entitled, Rafa al-Nasiri: His Life & Art, co-authored by Sabah Al Nassiri and May Muzafar, appeared in Amman. Rafa Nasiri died in Amman on the 7th of December 2013.

"Rafa Nasiri's vision is the poetic vision. His works testify to the speed with which thinking occurs, an immediacy that the art of painting can catch and convey. Our spirit translates its illuminations, explosions through the hands of the painter who uses colours, lines, shapes to unveil the adequate traces of his mind. But this mind is not a void. It is not an entity independent of the world but it rather needs the world in order to be. The medium, the matrix, the catalyst, the mediator between the world and the spirit is, for Rafa, the canvas while it is being painted. The paintings do not describe; they are an inner vision made visible."

Etel Adnan