Kadhim Hayder (Iraq, 1932-1985)The Martyr oil on wood panel, framedsigned 'Kadhim Hayder' and dated '69' (lower left), executed in 196991.5 x 63.3 cm (36 x 24 15/16in).Footnotes:Provenance:Property from the Artist's EstateExhibited: Kadhim Haidar, Solo Exhibition, Baghdad Museum of Modern Art, 18-28 Dec 1969 Published: Dia Azzawi, Makou Journal, Kadhim Hayder, 2022, illustrated p.235Shayma Khudhair, The Problem of Illusion in Painting: Kadhim Hayder as an Example, College of Fine Arts, Baghdad, 2005Entesar Munad Ali, The Psycho-Epistemological Variables in Works of Kadhim Hayder, College of Fine Arts, University of Baghdad, 2022 A Rare and Magnificent Painting by Kadhim Hayder'The horse represents the knight, keeping with the popular belief that the horse carries the spirit of the knight after his martyrdom'- Kadhim Hayder'The exhibition of The Epic of the Martyr took place in circumstances that were politically and culturally complicated; it turned the idea of martyrdom into a modern symbol that cried out in tragedy apart from any religious interpretation.'- Dia al-AzzawiThis extraordinary painting by Kadhim Hayder, from the artists inimitable Martyrs series, is a powerful depiction of the aftermath of the cycle, it is an emotionally charged work that showcases the artist's masterful use of religious allegory and cultural mythology. The painting carries an impressive provenance, coming from the estate of the artist, and is being offered on the market for the first time. What makes this painting particularly special is that it was not originally part of the Martyrs Epic series, but was painted 4 years after the exhibition. It shows the artist's fondness for this particular moment in the epic cycles, and his desire to explore it further. The scene itself is rich with symbolism: the foreground is dominated by a large, rectangular white sheet, most likely the Islamic 'kafan' or burial shroud of Hussein himself, the white expanse on which rests Hussein's sword, becomes almost an abstract symbol of the Martyr expressed through colour and form alone. Above the white expanse, horses and soldiers mourn the death of their beloved commander while on the right, a maternal figure with arms upraised is depicted with a child suspended in her womb, most likely an allusion to the death of the infant Ali Asghar, Husseins youngest son, during the Battle. Below the scene a prostrate red figure is unmistakably Shimr, the prime antagonist of the Battle of Karbala and the soldier responsible for Hussiens death, always depicted in red or clothed in red during passion plays to contrast him from the pure white and green of the martyred Hussein and his soldiers.This remarkable painting is a testament to Kadhim Hayder's importance in the history of Iraqi art, and his enduring legacy as an artist who captured the essence of one of the most important events in Islamic history.Saleem Al Bahloly: The Epic of the Martyr'Haidar began working on the series in 1963 shortly after returning from London where he had studied printmaking and stage-design at the Royal College of Art. On the one hand, the paintings were a continuation of the interests of artists in the 1950s: in the inspiration Haidar found in popular culture and in his adoption of certain pictorial devices from ancient Assyrian sculpture to modern art (associated with the Baghdad Group for Modern Art) as well as in his concern with political struggles for justice (associated with the Pioneers art group). On the other hand, however, Haidar opened a new horizon for the practice of art by structuring the paintings around an act of symbolism.The paintings are composed of horses and warriors, wielding spears and swords and bearing banners and shields, that are positioned on a flat, mythical landscape. This imagery was drawn from the annual taʿziya celebrations that mourn the martyrdom of al-Husayn and other members of the Prophet's family in a stand-off with the Umayyad army in 680 AD; in particular, the imagery is taken from the processions in which a pageant of costumed figures representing characters from the battle fought on the 'plain' west of the Euphrates parade through the street accompanying poets who narrate in a vernacular tradition of verse the injustice suffered by the Prophet's family.In the paintings, this imagery has been reconstructed according to a variety of devices inspired by a range of sources: the bodies of the horses and figures are turned toward the viewer, as if they are appearing on a stage or in an ancient frieze depicting a historic battle; a sense of performance is carried into the image by the intense expressivity of their gestures which seem to dissolve anatomical features and the outline of shapes in a fervour of emotion; the limbs of human and animal bodies alike are often multiplied (an influence of Assyrian sculptural reliefs that Haider almost certainly saw at the British Museum in London) and tapered (a form of modelling inspired by the sculpture of Henry Moore).The reconstructed imagery is arranged in the paintings not to narrate a historical event but to elaborate a concept of the martyr that emerged out of that event—a hero who by his death in a struggle for truth paradoxically triumphs. Haidar developed this concept of the martyr in painting by focusing on the symbolic relation between the fallen martyr and his horse. As he explained to the newspaper al-Jumhuriyya in 1965: 'the horse represents the knight, keeping with the popular belief that the horse carries the spirit of the knight after his martyrdom.' That symbolism is present in the mourning processions where al-Husayn is represented by a riderless white horse; but it has its roots in a legend that, when al-Husayn's horse saw his beheaded corpse, it circled around his body, rubbed its head in his blood, let out a ferocious whine and killed forty men.The paintings in The Epic of the Martyr were different sizes [they] reflect, as Dia al-ʿAzzawi has written, Haidar's desire to collapse the distinction between gallery and street, and between art and ritual, by reproducing the atmosphere of the folk celebration inside the museum. To that end, for the exhibition in 1965, Haidar composed a poem in which each line corresponded to a painting in the series, in this way reproducing the coupling of pageant and poetry in the mourning processions.This attempt to go beyond the conventional materials of painting, in order to use the artwork to stage an experience that is not only visual but also emotive, makes The Epic of the Martyr one of the earliest pieces of contemporary art in the Middle East.'Saleem Al-Bahloly received a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and has held fellowships at Johns Hopkins and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is writing a book about an intellectual shift that occurred in Iraq during the 1960s in response to disillusionment with left-wing politics. 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