Ismail Khayat, Kurdish artist, dies at 78

The renowned Kurdish artist Ismail Khayat passed away in October 2022. A legendary figure, he was a pioneer of modern Kurdish art and of the art scene in Iraqi Kurdistan, in a career spanning almost six decades.

He was born in 1944 in Diyala Governate, near the Iranian border, where Luri dialect is spoken. He grew up in the Sulaymaniyah region and as a child drew with charcoal on the walls of his parents’ house. He studied art in Sulimaniyah.

A prolific artist, He used a broad range of media media, including ink, watercolor, charcoal, colored pencils, as well as oil on canvas, paper, wood, and fabric. He produced some 4,000 paintings and more than 3,000 stone paintings.

His work combined imagination, storytelling, lived experience, and observation. He took inspiration from his surroundings, painting childhood memories of nature around his home, especially fish, birds, wild animals.

Kurdish folklore and traditional symbols infuse his work, like the evil eye; the hamsa, an emblem containing a right hand with an eye; and the tree of life.

He frequently used birds to depict freedom and the fragility of life. In one series expressing the persecution of Iraqi Kurds, he depicted ghostly birds rising from the bodies of the dead.

He painted streetscapes of Baghdad, with alleyways and mosques, and portraits of Kurdish men and women, often inspired by his mother and his wife. masks.

Affected by the pain of the Anfal, he grappled with ideas of collective struggle and political isolation, and with war and genocide. One of his famous works was the Pirar Project, undertaken in 2000, in the wake of the Iraqi Kurdish civil war. The road from Erbil province to Koya district was a demilitarized zone; along the road he painted boulders with messages of peace and brotherhood, and thousands of smaller painted rocks.

Khayat actively promoted arts education in Bashur. He taught art in public schools for 25 years, supervised art schools in Sulimaniyah, and later taught at American University of Iraq. He conducted training sessions and workshops inside the KRG and abroad. He served as an arts director for the KRG’s Ministry of Culture.

Over his career, he had 106 solo exhibitions and participated in many joint exhibitions with other artists. He exhibited not only in Iraq but in France, the United States, Japan and more. In 2006 the Kurdistan Regional Government established a gallery in Sulimaniyah in his name. He died just as a new show at the Sharjah Museum Authority was opening, exhibiting more than 100 of his pieces.