Ismail Fattah Al-Turk … the image of the pure artist

The Iraqi magazine “Mako” dedicated its second issue to the experience of the plastic artist and sculptor Ismail Fattah al-Turk (1934-2004), one of the most prominent symbols of artistic modernity in Iraq. This magazine, which bears a purely Iraqi title meaning “no”, seeks to document the pioneering experiences of the Iraqi plastic artist, at the initiative of the well-known Iraqi plastic artist Dia Al-Azzawi, with the aim of resisting isolation and rebuilding the network of creative relationships between Iraqi visual artists in the diaspora. The online magazine had dedicated its first issue to the experience of the pioneering painter, Muhammad Mahruddin. As if restoring the period of the sixties flourishing with all fields of creativity was an attempt to restore the damage that afflicted Iraqi culture, and to show another image of the scene that includes a kind of resistance in the face of darkness.

Ismail Fattah al-Turk was one of the victims of the American war, siege and occupation of Iraq in 2003, when his works were looted from the “Museum of Modern Art” in Baghdad, in view of the occupation soldiers as part of “Destroy the collective memory of the Iraqi people.” Most of her works were lost due to her indifference and negligence, and some of her paintings were subjected to forgeries in light of the chaos that gripped the country. The pain will be completed with the death of this unique plastic artist, a year after the occupation of Baghdad, when he closed his eyes in the hospital, after taking a last look at the Tigris River.
The subject included studies, documents and testimonies on the experience of Ismail Fattah, in addition to a large number of his sculptural and plastic works, and reading in his sketchbooks. In his extensive study, Ammar Daoud refers to the peculiarity of this artist’s work, which is exemplified by his monolithic creatures that are protected by the veil of alienation: “ Camouflaged faces with sharp edges, as if their bodies were flat and stretched out subject to the power of touching their fluctuating surfaces, they will nevertheless reveal their enigmatic destinies. As for its carved figures, they reveal the lust for the pleasures and desires of life, despite their apparent stillness ”. Taghreed Hashem retrieves this artist’s notebooks containing his sketches, linking his experience with the vocabulary of his mentor, Jawad Saleem, especially the horse single, but from a different location.
In his interview with Ismail Fattah, Dia Al-Azzawi first reviews the most important features of his adventure as a sculptor, of the most important monuments of the Baghdad squares such as Abu Nawas, Al-Rasafi, Gilgamesh, Al-Wasi and Al-Shaheed , and secondly, his paintings are distinguished by their delicate balance, soft lightness and lyricism of light, the vagrant experience From Basra, to Baghdad, then his studies in Rome, and his stay in London, which placed him in distinct and specific positions, exploding his earlier stages in “sharp lines and strong color contrasts with an emphasis on face or body detail.” Suhail Nader refers to the aesthetics of the late artist’s sculpture, which is depicted in “erasing external relations of a theatrical nature and showing the sculpture a pure body that deprived it of all hope that it was something else.” Badr Al-Hajj sums up his testimony by saying: “An artist whose life ended when Iraq splintered before him.” Al-Hajj considered that “although Ismail’s sculptures were distributed throughout Baghdad, such as the statues of Maarouf al-Rusafi, al-Farabi, Abu Nawas, Yahya bin Mahmoud al-Wasiti and others, the monument to the martyr is undoubtedly a of his most outstanding works, not only at the level of the Arab world, It is considered one of the largest and most outstanding sculptural works in the world.

It is considered one of the most prominent symbols of artistic modernity in Iraq.

For his part, the architect Moaz Al-Alousi says that “the faces of Ismail Fattah are looking and looking to tell what is not told, and to tell what is not told, some of those miseries.” Muhammad al-Obeidi participates in his personality, saying: “I did not have any technical precautions. Once he removed a cloth curtain in my house and found in it suitable material for drawing.” He adds: “His creative world did not depend on a single system or a specific technical category. And once again his intuition was his guide and the source of his inspiration. ” He remembers telling him: “I am a painter who sculpts, not the other way around.” Nizar Yahya sends a letter to his teacher, recalling his memories with him in the city of Doha, where he worked during his last years: “Despite what your artistic product suggests, but during work you are very focused and accurate. You are the image of the pure artist. You were living your life in all its details, rebelling against the great creators. “We will also sign the” strangers’ notebooks “and postcards that he wrote to his friends in exile, as the Iraqi creatives were scattered across continents, and perhaps this thick file would give him back part of his lost right.
https://www.makouart.com/

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