LONDON.- A striking work by Kadhim Hayder (Iraq, 1932-1985) leads the 91-lot Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art sale in New Bond Street on 23 November. This will be the final instalment of the Baghdadiyat trilogy, a series of sales focused on Iraqi works from prestigious private collections. A Love Deeper than All Love (Wa hawa aemaq min kuli hawa), which has an estimate of £100,000 - 120,000, is offered to the market for the first time. It will contribute to an exciting selection of work by major artists from the Middle East, including Jewad Selim and Mahmoud Saïd.

A seminal work by Kadhim Hayder (Iraq, 1932-1985), A Love Deeper than All Love (Wa hawa aemaq min kuli hawa) is part of his Epic of the Martyr series, which focuses on the Battle of Karbala and death of Imam Hussein. A Love Deeper than All Love is exceptional within the Martyr series, a peaceful moment of intimacy within a dramatic and occasionally bloody narrative. Hussein and his wife, Shahbanu, appear as horses, he with a moustache and her veiled. This is a play on the original tale, in which Hussein lends Shahbanu his steed so that she might escape the battle. As she prays for salvation, the mountain she rides over opens up, and she disappears beneath leaving only a scrap of her veil in her wake.

This piece is extremely rare. It was one of the most displayed from the cycle and was exhibited at the artist's landmark shows at the National Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad and Beirut in 1965. Its deeply personal subject matter is reflected in its provenance, emerging from the prestigious private collection of one of Hayder's oldest friends, Professor Abdul Aziz Hameed. Estimate: £100,000 - 120,000.

Nima Sagharchi, Group Head of Middle Eastern, Islamic and South Asian Art, commented, “Hayder mimics Assyrian sculptural reliefs, where horses and warriors would appear in procession against a flat landscape, and the Martyr series centres on the idea that the spirit of the knight entered his horse after death. A Love Deeper than All Love is a particularly powerful variation on this theme, containing only the married couple, a nod to the sacrifices of a martyr who posthumously triumphs in a struggle for truth. The masterpiece has excellent provenance, having belonged to a close friend of the artist.”

The Wedding Chest, a rare work by Jewad Selim (Iraq, 1919-1961), the father of Iraqi modernism, will also be offered in the sale. This represents one of few instances when a Selim oil painting from his Baghdad Modern Art Group period has appeared at auction. The Wedding Chest, produced at the zenith of his career, realises the concerns of the group he co-founded to “serve local and international culture”. With the image of a bride carrying aloft a wedding or dowry chest, Selim draws attention to the unjust treatment of women in society. Selim saw art as a means by which national identity could be revived and reinforced. The use of traditional Iraqi and Islamic motifs with modernist techniques to record contemporary social and political realities was integral to his practice of “folk modernism”, which depicted characters from daily life in Baghdad. Estimate: £70,000-100,000.




Other highlights from the sale include:

• Mahmoud Saïd (Egypt, 1897-1964), Paysage a Louxor. Offered directly from the artist’s family, the work embodies Saïd’s quest to find the “internal light”, which “imprisons” and “possesses” the viewer. His stylised rural scenes attempted to make plain the rich history embedded in Egypt’s terrain. The Nile, a river that has become a symbol of the country’s lineage, is seen from one of its most ancient cities, Luxor, known for its ruins. Saïd admires the “true” Egypt, and the tree overhanging the blue waters distils its complex past into the purest possible form. Estimate: £160,000 - 200,000.

• Mahmoud Saïd (Egypt, 1897-1964), La Seine á Paris. This early painting demonstrates how Saïd used the influence of Impressionist artists such as Corot, Cézanne and Renoir in his rendering of light, after studying in France for three consecutive summers between 1919 and 1921. Estimate: £40,000 - 80,000.

• Shafic Abboud (Lebanon, 1926-2004), Nuits A. A large abstract work, Nuits A demonstrates Abboud’s magnificent draughtsmanship, layering free-flowing brushstrokes on to carefully arranged fields of pigment. Estimate: £70,000-100,000.

• Adam Henein (Egypt, 1929-2020), Om Kalthoum. A tribute to the greatest female singer in Arab music history, Umm Kulthum, in the form of a sculpture. Estimate: £70,000-100,000.

• Charles Hossein Zenderoudi (Iran, b. 1927), DELBODNAHAN SHOD. Composed in the late 1960s, the painting marks a turning point in her career, where brightly coloured letterforms appropriated from traditional Persian calligraphy were introduced to the frame. Estimate: £70,000 - 100,000.

• Hamed Nada (Egypt, 1924-1990), The Unruly Horse. An integral member of Hussein Youssef Amin’s Contemporary Art Group, Nada took inspiration from the children’s drawings he saw while teaching at a primary school and the Egyptian pioneer artists who revived pharaonic art. After the 1970s, more serious themes were set aside in favour of the fantastic, which gave rise to works like The Unruly Horse, replete with movement and rhythm. Estimate: £50,000-80,000.