Galerie Claude Lemand

TONDO International – Dia AL-AZZAWI 2001-2025 – 12 new TONDOS.

By Claude Lemand & Louisa Macmillan

For the artist Dia al-Azzawi, round art­works are fun­da­men­tally dif­ferent to those in rect­an­gular for­mats as the viewer’s eye wan­ders in more random and cir­cular move­ments, as opposed to fol­lowing a log­ical nar­ra­tive pro­gres­sion as if reading a page. This chal­lenges his sense of com­po­si­tion as the rela­tion­ship of ele­ments radi­ating from the centre towards the edge becomes more impor­tant than ver­tical and hor­i­zontal ele­ments.
Azzawi started making cir­cular com­po­si­tions in the 1980s, appearing in carpet designs in 1983 and silkscreen prints in 1987, and then as round paint­ings from 1996 onwards. In part inspired by his gal­lerist in Paris, Claude Lemand, Azzawi con­tinued to make cir­cular art­works on both wood and canvas in the 21st cen­tury, and turned to cir­cular bas-relief sculp­tures in the 2010s, as part of a vast series of sculp­tural art­works based on the desert rose.

Born in Baghdad in 1939, Dia al-Azzawi set­­tled in London in 1976. As a trained archae­ol­o­gist, he was already lit­erate in Mesopotamia’s rich cul­­tural her­itage, but vis­iting sev­eral museums and libraries across Europe enabled him to dis­­­cover the arts of many civ­i­l­iza­­­tions and to redis­­­cover manuscripts from the golden age of Islamic civ­i­l­iza­­­tion during the Abbasid era. The cul­­ture and the his­­tory of the Arab world as a whole have always been the main source of his inspi­ra­­tion. He appre­­ci­ates Arabic poetry from the modern era as well as more clas­sical verse, and he has pro­­duced a pro­lific and rich oeuvre, inspired by the great modern and con­tem­po­rary Arab poets of the past.

Watching the infa­mous attack on New York’s World Trade Center on the news, Dia al-Azzawi had an imme­­diate artistic reac­­tion to this. Black Roots (2001) depicts a night­­mare vision: the scene is dom­i­nated by enor­­mous dark flames, whilst the sky and horizon are black. Azzawi is an Arab nation­alist, com­mitted to defending and pre­serving the cul­tures of the Arab world. He always denounced the West’s attacks on the Arab world and its people, as well as its sup­­port for Israel and for cor­rupted author­i­­tarian Arab regimes, while also acknowl­edging a dark and neg­a­­tive side to it.

Of the 41 tondos Azzawi painted since 2001, Black Roots is the only tragic one relating to con­tem­po­rary events. The other cir­cular paint­ings cel­e­brate the world’s beauty through colour: the love of life, sweeping land­scapes, res­plen­dent gar­dens, the noc­turnal blue of peaceful dreams without night­­mares. Blue Landscape (2016) is an example of a large three-dimen­­sional joyful tondo. It is a cubistic com­po­si­­tion which could allude to a real land­scape seen through an aero­plane window (the artist travels exten­­sively) or a window with a view over the Mediterranean Sea, a land­s­cape from a dream char­ac­­terised by its deep blue colour, alluding to either day or night… it stays open for inter­pre­­ta­­tion.
The same deep, peaceful blue also appears in bas-relief form in The Prophet’s Garden (2020–22), while Azzawi’s cel­e­bra­tion of the rich colours of the nat­ural world can be viewed throughout a col­lec­tion of smaller tondo paint­ings made in 2023–24 (Forgotten Garden, Marrakech Sunset, Green Field, Morning Rose, Blue Window, Sunny Day and Red Field).

These cir­cular art­works illus­­trate well the two per­­ma­­nent sides of the great Arab artist from London: a duty to doc­u­ment the mas­sacres and vio­­lent events that have trau­­ma­­tized the Arab world for decades – often viewed as part of the tra­di­tion of Picasso as an artist-wit­ness – and a poly­chro­matic cel­e­bra­tion of the light of the Arab world and its gar­dens – related to Matisse’s joyful works about nature – which express the joy of living.