Dia Azzawi (Iraqi, b. 1939)

Dia Azzawi studied art and archeology at the Faculty of Arts at Baghdad University. With encouragement from Jewad Selim, pioneer of modern Iraqi art, he began to combine techniques of contemporary painting with motifs drawn from the Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian heritage of Iraq, and with geometric patterning drawn and arabesque from the contemporary tribal culture of the desert. From the mid-1960s these elements formed the basis of his painting.