AlBahie’s eighth edition of its Modern and Contemporary Art Auction is scheduled to be held on Wednesday June 8 at 7.30pm at AlBahie’s Main Auction Hall – Katara Cultural Village, Building 22C.
Comprising over ninety lots by forty five artists, it is one of the most important auctions to take place in the region that features mid to late 20th century art from the Arab region including works by pioneers of Modern Arab Art and notable contemporary artists including a rare work by the late Iraqi pioneer Kadhim Haider which is offered for the first time ever in a public sale in the region and whose works are very rare to find and never leave the private collections and museums they sit in.
The artists whose works are featured in the auction come from cities around the region that either are or have been considered important centers of Arab artistic movements such as Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus, Gaza, Ramallah, Khartoum, Marrakesh, Algiers and more.
It also includes works by artists from the Arab diaspora from around the world such as New York, London, Paris, Geneva, Budapest, Dusseldorf, Berlin and Istanbul, some of whom are featured in an auction in the region for the first time.
The auction brings together works that can be great examples of certain periods and movements in Arab art that reflect the socio- political context of the generation of those artists, which makes some of the works in the auction museum-level and historically important masterpieces. Some of the works are unapologetically confrontational - addressing important Arab socio-political issues, which in itself is a recurring theme within art from the Arab region since the early Arab art movements. In contrast to that, the other contemporary works offer us a glimpse of new and emerging surrealist and abstract practices that inform where new movements of art from the region are heading towards. However, what ties most of the works together is perhaps the common questions they explored as Arab artists which led to defining a distinct visual language rooted in local culture and tradition that we now identify as Arab art or art from the region. This includes movements such as the Hurifiyyah, which in this auction is beautifully represented by works by two different generation of artists that show the style of the movement in its early stages to its evolution today.
The auction is led by exceptional works by the late Iraqi pioneer artist Kadhim Haider (Lot 71, Untitled, estimate $20,000 - $40,000), another late Iraqi pioneer Shaker Hassan Al Said (Lots 50 & 51, estimates between $22,000 - $30,000 each), the Lebanese pioneer Paul Guiragossian (Lot 42 & 43, Untitled, estimate $13,000 - $18,000 each) and the Palestinian artist Samia Halaby (Lot 15 & 16, Lunch Time and Whispering, estimates $5,000 - $7,000 each). Other major highlights of the auction include the work of the late Iraqi pioneer artist Jewad Salim (Lot 56, estimate $7,000 - $9,000), the late Iraqi artist Ismail Fattah (Lot 33, estimate $1,500 - $2,500 and Lot 36, estimate $3,000 - $4,000), the renowned Indian-Qatari artist M.F Husain (Lot 75, estimate $8,000 - $12,000) and the Algerian Baya Mahieddine (Lot 44, estimate $8,000 - $12,00).
AlBahie is pleased to offer other outstanding examples of great works by Charles Khoury, ElSeed, Aissa Deebi, Suad Al Attar, Faraj Abbo AlNuman, Rachid Koraichi, Muzaffar Al Nawab, Faisal Laibi and many more, something we expect will spark a strong response from our local and international collectors. The range of works in terms of medium, size, period, the collections they come from and the prices they start at undoubtedly make it an incredible and unmissable opportunity for both seasoned and young collectors of art from the region. AlBahie is at the forefront of and a key player in the formation of a local Arab art market which contributes to a vibrant art scene vital to the creative economy.
For online bidding: https://www.invaluable.com/ catalog/wt9fktoocs
