Muhammad Muhraddin – Born in 1938 in Basra, Muhraddin developed a love for painting during his childhood, and his one of his teachers, who encouraged him to study art, noticed his talent. In 1956 Muhraddin left Basra for Baghdad and enrolled into the Institute of Fine Arts, graduating in 1959.
Muhraddin then received a scholarship to study in Poland, completing a Masters degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw,and although he reportedly struggled with some of the new concepts he encountered, Warsaw had a great impact on his artistic style. It was there that he was exposed to and inspired by abstract movements led by experimental Polish artists,s well as radical Eastern European street art, constructivism, and the art of political posters. Returning to Iraq in the mid-1960s, Muhraddin began teaching at the Institute of Fine Art whilst also producing his own work. He returned to an Iraq rife with rebellion, still reeling from various military coups and the rise of Arab nationalism, all of which influenced cultural production. Muhraddin’s work, along with many others, began to follow a distinct theme: protest. He had his first solo exhibition in Baghdad in 1966, cementing his status as a serious, promising artist, but then in 1967, war broke out between the Arab nations and Israel, resulting in a disheartening defeat. However, this only served to push creatives further into the cause, giving them a new challenge with artists wondering how artistic activism could become a movement.
(DALLOUL ART FOUNDATION)
