Born in Tikrit, northwest of Baghdad, in 1940, Rafa Nasiri (1940-2013) was one of the most important Iraqi artists. He first studied at the Baghdad College of Fine Arts receiving a diploma in painting in 1959 under the supervision of Faik Hassan and Jewad Selim before moving to China to study printmaking at the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts. Nasiri graduated in 1963, and in 1965 he returned to Baghdad shortly before starting an extensive road trip with his two brothers to twenty-four Arab and European countries. This extensive trip allowed Nasiri to familiarise himself with Western art history as he visited countless museums including the iconic Louvre, Prado, and Rijksmuseum. In 1967, the artist attended the Gravura in Lisbon, Portugal, where he studied for another diploma in printmaking, graduating in 1969 aided by a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation. Nasiri returned to Baghdad once again, and started to teach at the University of Baghdad, his alma mater, eventually establishing the Department of Graphic Art, which marked a new era in the Iraqi art history. In 1991, the artist relocated to Jordan together with his wife, a poet and visual artist May Muzaffar. In Amman Nasiri continued teaching at the Yarmouk University and directed the Darat al Funun Centre for the Arts, an important art institution for Arab artists, from 1993 to 1995, leaving his mark on the cultural and artistic landscape of the Jordanian capital. After six years in Bahrain from 1997 to 2003, the artist returned to Amman, where he lived and worked until his death in 2013.

Nasiri played a crucial role in developing the Iraqi modern art scene. He was part of several artists’ groups including al-Ru’yya al-Jadidah, ‘the New Vision Group’ together with Ismail Fattah al-Turk and Dia al-Azzawi. In the group’s manifesto, the like-minded artists declared that ‘heritage is not a prison, a static phenomenon or a force capable of repressing creativity so long as we have the freedom to accept or challenge its norms’, thereby differentiating itself from its predecessor, the Baghdad Group, which Jewad Selim had founded in 1951, by arguing for a more progressive understanding of cultural heritage. Nasiri also co-founded the important Jama’t Al-Bu’d al Wahad, ‘One Dimension Group’ together with the Baghdadi artist Shakir Hassan Al Said. This group underlined the continuity of Arab-Islamic visual traditions into modern abstraction. Nasiri’s inclusion in several influential artists’ groups echoed his interest in intellectual debates surrounding art and Arab modernity.

One of Nasiri’s most significant accomplishments is the development of a strong tradition of Iraqi printmaking and influence on the subsequent generation of artists, including Nedim Kufi and Hanaa Malallah. The artist’s involvement in art groups as well as teaching and lecturing at various universities further accentuated his influence over the next generations.

Stylistically, Nasiri’s oeuvre is influenced by his time in China. The paintings of Qui Baishi as well as the printmaking techniques of his teachers at the Beijing Central Academy, Huang Yongyu and Li Hua, and Chinese calligraphy played important roles in shaping Nasiri’s practice. The latter caused the artist to develop an interest towards Arabic calligraphy, eventually incorporating the principles of Hurufiyya, a pan-Arab art movement, into his work. Nasiri combined elements of Arabic calligraphy with abstraction and printmaking, eventually taking part in numerous debates surrounding the concept(s) of Arab modernism, where the core tenet was to privilege local influences such as calligraphy over foreign ones.

Towards the later part of his career, Nasiri became increasingly interested in language and poetry, and his interest culminated in artbooks such as Andalusia (1990) and Rain Song (2012). Although mostly focused on printmaking, the artist also created a small collection of drawings in the 1960s and 1970s, and again in the 2000s and 2010s.