Doha showcases the Baghdad Group's legacy of modern art in an exhibition starting Oct. 25

On Oct. 25 the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha opens an exhibition titled “What Remains in the Artist’s Mind: Experiences of the Baghdad Group for Modern Art and Its Legacy,” which will remain on view until Feb. 6, 2027.

The exhibition brings together a selection of paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs and archival documents in an effort to read the roots of the Baghdad Group’s experiment and its influence, which extended beyond Iraq’s borders and shaped multiple trajectories in modern Arab art.

The show aims to raise questions about the relationship between art, identity and memory, and the possibility of transforming local experiences into a language that transcends geographic boundaries while preserving their roots — a theme that emerges across the works and archival materials on display.

The Baghdad Group for Modern Art was founded in 1951 by artists Jawad Salim and Shakir Hassan Al Said during a period of social, cultural and political change in Iraq. The group sought at the time to shape an independent Iraqi visual language that neither replicated Western models nor closed itself to rigid traditional patterns.

The group drew inspiration from elements of Mesopotamian civilization, Islamic symbols and the vocabulary of everyday Iraqi life, experimenting with form, script, symbol and composition, which opened new horizons for artists and those seeking contemporary formulations of heritage.

The exhibition presents works by a range of artists associated with that experience, including Jawad Salim, Shakir Hassan Al Said, Naziha Salim, Lorna Salim, Mohammed Ghani Hikmat, Faik Hassan, Khalid al‑Rahal, Kazem Haidar and Dia Azzawi, alongside other artists who were influenced by the group’s ideas or participated in its trajectories.

Featured works include notable pieces such as Jawad Salim’s painting “Baghdadiyat” (1956), Shakir Hassan Al Said’s “One Thousand and One Nights” series, Naziha Salim’s “Woman with a Bird,” as well as documents and works related to the “Monument of Freedom” in Baghdad, a design credited to Jawad Salim and completed by sculptor Mohammed Ghani Hikmat.

These pieces are presented not merely as historical evidence but as keys to reading Iraq’s social and cultural transformations and as prompts for questions about the city, the human being, memory and belonging.

The Doha show is part of an ongoing regional interest in the experiment, following the reopening of the exhibition “All Forms of Experimentation… The Legacy of the Baghdad Group for Modern Art” at the NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Gallery, which was extended until Jan. 3, 2027.

Through this presentation the organizers stress the need to protect Iraqi collections and visual archives and to make them accessible to researchers and new generations, in order to preserve a living artistic memory that goes beyond compiling isolated names and works.