Ismail Khayat, the artist dubbed “the Picasso of Iraq” and the “grandfather of Kurdish painting,” passed away after spending two years in a coma.
His family released a statement to confirm his death, albeit they did not give the cause.
May his spirit rest in peace and may God provide his family patience and comfort, said Sharjah Museums Authority, which is presently showing a selection of his artwork.
Khayat, a prolific artist who entered the world arena with a unique vision and style, was a key figure in the development of modern Kurdish art. His art, which numbered in the hundreds, drew inspiration from both his Iraqi-Kurdish ancestry and the political unrest and exclusion his people experienced during his lifetime.
On July 1, 1944, Khayat was born in Khanaqin, a town in Iraq’s Diyala Governorate, close to the Iranian border, opposite the Alwand River, where the majority of the population spoke the Luri dialect of Kurdish. He comes from a family of tailors, as evidenced by his Kurdish family name, “Khayat,” which means “tailor.”
Khayat, the third of seven children, showed early skill as he spent a lot of his youth using charcoal to cover the walls of his home.
He attended the Baqubah Teachers’ Institute after finishing high school before relocating to Sulaymaniyah. It was then that he transformed his innate talents into a creative discipline. He eventually spent 25 years teaching art at public schools all around the city before working at the American University of Iraq.
He is credited as being a forerunner of modern Kurdish art and created a distinctive style that was influenced by Kurdish symbolism and folklore as well as Iraqi landscapes and Kurdish themes of communal struggle and political exile.
Over the course of his career, he created almost 8,000 pieces using a variety of media; more than 100 of them are currently on display as part of the Sharjah Art Museum’s Lasting Impressions series, which highlights significant players in the development of modern Arab art.
Although he mostly used paint, he also produced hundreds of smaller painted rocks during the Kurdish Civil War in the 1990s in the Kurdistan area of Pirate. These boulders were decorated with messages of peace.
Khayat’s distinctive style and breadth of the subject matter set his work apart from that of his contemporaries, from the legendary alleyways and minarets of Baghdad to the landscapes and animals of Sulaymaniyah to the bright portraits of ladies inspired by his mother and wife.
Khayat commonly utilized birds to represent freedom and the fragility of life in addition to more conventional symbols like the hamsa, which is an emblem consisting of a right hand with an eye, and the evil eye. He illustrated spectral birds drifting away from the remains of the dead in a series that reflected the persecution of Iraqi Kurds.
Throughout his career, Khayat showed his art all across Iraq, the region, and the globe, with exhibitions in countries including France, the US, Japan, and more. Later, he worked as the ministry of culture’s artistic director for the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Khayat’s children, Hayas and Hasara, have incorporated their father’s and grandfather’s legacy into the Kurdish fashion line Bakhsh. Together with Alya Al-Mulla, Hayas co-curated the current Sharjah Art Museum show.
The Sharjah Art Museum will be displaying Ismail Khayat’s creations through November 27.