Enemy of the People: Jewad Selim and the Baghdad Group for Modern Art Available to Purchase

Jewad Selim is Iraq's most celebrated modern artist. While his life and career were cut short, he continues to be revered by Iraqis and is largely credited with constructing Iraq's modern visual and intellectual iconography. Selim co-founded the Baghdad Group for Modern Art with artist Shakir Hassan Al Said in 1951. The group was nestled within the Baghdad modernist discourse and included Iraq's most active modernist at the time. Through the objectives of the group as stated in their manifesto, Selim instigated a process of negotiation between the past and present that became the mark of Iraqi modernism. This chapter contextualizes the group within the wider development of Iraqi modernism. It engages with specific works by Selim and explores his contribution in shaping Iraq's modernism that conjuncts the national with the international.