The cultural neighborhood “Katara” in Doha chose the title “Qatari Fine Art”. for exhibition Which began on the 18th of November and will continue until the closing day for the World Cup (December 18, 2022), with the participation of five male and female artists through 38 paintings inspired by the Qatari heritage. An appropriate event to introduce the country’s art scene and its heritage during a global event like this, especially when we are in front of paintings by artists Hassan Al-Mulla, Wafiqa Sultan, Jamila Al-Shuraim, Abdul Rahman Al-Mutawa, and Iman Al-Haidous.
However, the Two artists And three female artists belong to reality to the extent that they express it in different languages, whether in terms of raw materials or choosing direct solutions or coding them, as well as viewing angles for a single scene, where self-visual identities become clear in one unifying identity.
The artist Hassan Al-Mulla is described in the exhibition statement as “spontaneous, producing his works in response to his moment of excitement, which brings him closer to poetry and music.” And the Mulla, who was established academically in the Baghdad School, has indeed remained faithful to the momentary inspiration, that is, he paints his painting directly. His project transforms through oils or mixed materials faster than other artists.
Therefore, in the exhibition, you find a “childhood vision”, then a second vision during the Corona period, and in the World Cup, other paintings are inspired. As for what is indispensable and carried by his art everywhere, it is the crowding of paintings with static and moving details.
Wafiqa Sultan’s paintings contain motifs, stories and songs from her career, which is recognized in Qatar as the first Qatari to professionalize plastic art in the early seventies. And it, in contrast to the world of Hassan Al-Mulla, is more inclined to shed color on the formations from a close-up.
Artists expressing the same reality in five different languages and choices
These here are paintings that reflect the Qatari man’s relationship with the sea and the fishing traditions that began to disappear after entering the oil industry. In the sea and on land, the artist remains preoccupied with ornaments and Arabic calligraphy, always belonging to the marine blue color that surrounds Qatar on three sides, and appears in her paintings in essence.
Going to Jamila Al Shuraim, an artist and critic who began her career in the early eighties, seven of her paintings are the hero of the Arabian horse, with the exception of one of the falcon, which she photographed from zero distance to paint her painting entitled “The Insightful Look”. The paintings are characterized by light surfaces with light colors and clear lines, in a new experiment in her career that included sculptures and spatial installations.
Abdul Rahman Al-Mutawa was known for his immersion in graphic art, but years ago he took different plastic paths. In this exhibition, he has ten large-scale paintings, with an impressionistic, realistic passion, deep in dark colors, capturing in particular the light in its weakest state at sunset.
Al-Mutawa’a works seemed to refer to a fan of oil colors by traveling artists from the nineteenth century, and he is present in this exhibition strongly, after he had had enough of his graphic achievement and his manufacture of the first printing press in Qatar.
Finally, Iman Al-Haydos, with her six paintings that varied between drawing horses in large areas that she was previously known for inside and outside her country, including a five-meter mural displayed in Vienna, the capital of Austria.
In addition there are two paintings of daily life; One depicts the “Ezbah”, especially the sheepfold, and the second is from the popular market, titled “The Omani Seller of Shells”.