32 - SADIQ AHMED (IRAQI 1915-1997)

SADIQ AHMED (IRAQI 1915-1997) MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE WITH SHEEP signed Sadiq Ahmed in Arabic lower right oil on canvas 78.4 x 88cm (84.3 x 94.3cm framed) Property of a Private Collection, London Born in Iraq’s Nineveh Governorate, Sadiq Ahmed grew up with an early passion for art, inspired by his elementary school Armenian art teacher, Sarkis, and encouraged by his high school friend and fellow artist, Assem Hafez. Though he initially enrolled in the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1932, illness forced him to step away from his studies. He instead pivoted to education, graduating from the Primary Teachers' Training College in 1934 and taking up a teaching post in Kirkuk. Seeking a different path, Ahmed entered the Military College in Baghdad in 1938, graduating as a lieutenant a year later and eventually retiring as a brigadier general in 1963. Despite his military career, his dedication to the arts never waned. During the vibrant cultural boom of Kirkuk in the 1950s, fueled by a thriving international community centered around the local oil fields, Ahmed co-founded the influential Kirkuk Artists Group in 1953 alongside Mahmoud Al-Obaidi and Sinan Saeed. Throughout the decades, Ahmed became a fixture of the Iraqi art scene. He exhibited widely across Iraq and internationally, participating in numerous group exhibitions with the Kirkuk Artists Group and the Iraqi Plastic Artists Association, as well as showcases in Baghdad, Amman, Erbil, and Italy. His contributions were formally honoured by the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and Information with a retrospective exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art in 1982. Ahmed continued to paint and exhibit into his later years, holding his final exhibition at the Fine Arts Department Hall in 1997 before passing away in Baghdad at the age of eighty-two. His enduring legacy has continued to be celebrated through posthumous memorial exhibitions in Iraq and Jordan.