Kadhim Hayder

[1] In an interview, the artist recalled the event: One day, Muhammad Saleh Zaki came to the classroom and asked us to paint a fish.

Following the first Ba'th coup of 1963, Haydar produced a series of paintings inspired by the annual street performances mourning the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Husayn ibn Ali at the battle of Karbala.

"[8] He was also a writer and a poet with various publications including Al-Takhtit wal Elwan [Sketching and Colours] which became a standard text book at Academy of Fine Arts.

He has been described as one of the most respected Iraqi artists of the 20th-century, and his powerful artworks demonstrate his mastery of myth, poetic allegory and symbolism.

[10] His earliest works drew inspiration from the suffering of the Iraqi labourer - the paintings Al-Himal [The Porter] (1955); He Told Us How It Happened (1957) and The Struggle of the Hero (1959) are characteristic of this period in which he presents workers as heroes with well-developed musculature, chiselled features and an imposing presence as they faced their daily struggless.

While he dabbled with stage design in the 1950s, he became much more seriously engaged in set-design and costume-design for theatre productions after meeting Sami Abdul Hamid and Qasim Mohammad in London in the 1960s.

He designed sets for The Merchant of Venice; Antigonea; The Epic of Gilgagmash; Glass Animals; The Shariah; The Arab Hamlet and Old Baghdad Between the Grandfather, the Hazzan, the Khan.

[15] The art-critic, Farouq Youssif, described Haydar as part of a group of nihilistic artists, who were preoccupied with themes of death and martyrdom.

The conflict of all these elements materialized the tragedy of life which was renewed by the presence of brightness and darkness, good and evil, space and mass.