Khaled Al-Rahal (also given as Khālid al-Raḥḥāl, 1926–1987) () was an Iraqi painter and sculptor and one of the leaders of the modern art movement in Iraq. Described as one of the "pillars of modern Iraqi art," he was responsible for executing a number of high-profile public monuments in Baghdad in the mid-20th century.
Life and career
Born in Baghdad in 1926 into a poor family, Khaled al-Rahal grew up on Baghdad's streets and alleyways which became an important influence on his life and art. He was an acute observer of daily Iraqi life, and a regular visitor to the Iraqi Museum, established in 1939, where he showed great interest in Iraq's ancient sculptures, particularly Assyrian and Mesopotamian reliefs. Even before he studied art academically, his sculpture had developed a mature artistic vision, grounded in Mesopotamian art traditions.
During the second world war, he was just a teenager when the first signs of an art revival began in Baghdad. A group of Polish artists, mainly impressionists, had sought refuge in Baghdad, where they introduced local artists to European art. While, this created considerable enthusiasm for modern abstract art, it also left many local artists, including al-Rahal, searching for a way to integrate their ancient art traditions within modern, abstract artworks.
Throughout the 1940s, al-Rahal maintained a studio in Baghdad's commercial district, where he made and sold busts of the Iraqi monarch and other works, all of which were very popular with the public. The Iraqi artist, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, described his visit to al-Rahal's studio in the following terms:
At war's end, al-Rahal, by then in his early twenties, was part of a small group of talented, local artists who were granted scholarships to study art at the Baghdad Fine Arts Institute or abroad in either Paris or Rome. Al-Rahal received his earliest formal education at Baghdad Institute of Fine Arts under the supervision of the eminent Iraqi sculptor, Jawad Saleem, graduating with a Diploma in Sculpting in 1947.
Like many of his contemporaries, al-Rahal started out by working for the Iraq Museum under the Director of Antiquities, Naji al-Asil in the 1950s, where he was employed to make replicas of Iraq's ancient art pieces. During this period, he was commissioned to reproduce a bust of Sumerian Queen, Shuba'ad. He dressed her in royal jewelry from the Cemetery at Ur. The bust went on public display at the Museum, where it became an iconic image of Iraq's Sumerian past. Replicas of the bust were sold in tourist outlets and the figure became one of the most reproduced images in Iraqi art, being used on postcards, posters, souvenirs and in popular art.
In 1953 al-Rahal joined Jama’et Baghdad lil Fen al-Hadith (The Baghdad Modern Art Group) founded in 1951, by his friend and mentor, Jawad Saleem, along with the artist and intellectual, Shakir Hassan Al Said.<ref>Baram, A., Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba'thist Iraq,1968–89, Springer, 1991, pp 69–70; Shabout, N.,"Shakir Hassan Al Said: Time and Space in the Work of the Iraqi Artist – A Journey Towards One Dimension," Nafas Art Magazine, May, 2008, Online:; Lack, J., Why Are We 'Artists'?: 100 World Art Manifestos, Penguin, 2017, [E-book edition], n.p. See section M52</ref> The group, which would have a far-reaching impact on Iraqi art sought to bridge the gap between modernity and tradition, by developing a distinctive Iraqi art aesthetic which employed modern techniques, but at the same time referenced its ancient heritage and tradition. Hassan, the group's leader promoted the idea of istilham al-turath – "seeking inspiration from tradition" and wrote a manifesto for the group. Al-Khalel was an ardent admirer of Jawad Saleem and committed to his ideals.
In the early 1960s, he was awarded another scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, which further exposed him to the fundamentals of European sculpture. He obtained a Master of Fine Arts in 1964. He remained in Rome throughout most of the 1960s, and produced several public works for the city of Rome.