Lot 18: KADHIM HAYDER (IRAQ, 1932-1985) Shimr and the Shahid (from the Martyr S

KADHIM HAYDER (IRAQ, 1932-1985) Shimr and the Shahid (from the Martyr Series) oil on jute signed K. Haidar and dated 65 (lower left), executed in 1965 70 x 95cm (27 9/16 x 37 3/8in).

Provenance Property from a private collection, Germany Acquired directly from the artist by a German businessman, Iraq, 1965 Vigorous, dynamic and intense, Shimr and the Shahid is a seminal work by one of Iraq’s most enigmatic modern artists, Kadhim Hayder. Being offered in the market for the first time, the work comes from a prestigious German collection of Iraqi art, having been presented directly by the artist to the present owner in Iraq in the 1960’s. Kadhim Hayder was a master of weaving symbolism, poetic allegory and abstraction into compositions that were predominantly narrative in subject matter. As a poet, he had a lifelong fascination with the Shi’ite epic of the Martyrdom of Imam Hussein and this episode forms the subject matter of his most significant body of work, The Epic of the Martyr which was exhibited in 1965, the same year as the present composition, at the National Museum of Modern Art. A popular subject in Shi’ite folklore, the story of Hussein’s martyrdom has been a subject of both art and popular religious expression for centuries. The present work must therefore be understood in reference to Hayder’s wider cycle of works dealing with the battle of Karbala; in other compositions from the cycle, the white horses of Imam Hussein are seen mourning the death of their Martyr beneath an ominous moon. In the present work, the devious Shimr, who slaughtered Hussein, is mounted on horseback in the background; the key villain of popular passion plays, Shimr and his horse were always depicted draped in red garb, in opposition to the pious green colouring of the Imam himself. In front of Shimr stands an un-named soldier making a final but hopeless stand against the Umayyad onslaught.