Dia al-Azzawi Baghdad to Beirut: The Itinerary of a Young Arab Artist in the Sixties

Dia al-Azzawi belongs to the generation of Arab artists who came of age both artistically and politically in the sixties. The ‘sixties generation’, as it came to be known in Iraq (as elsewhere in the Arab world) represents a radical turn in postcolonial artmaking that is marked by the ebbs and flows of the long sixties’ social and political vicissitudes. These were great times of national liberation, social emancipation, revolutions and disenchantments. But most importantly, for artists of this generation, these were utopian times of great faith in art’s revolutionary potential. Beirut was emerging as a nexus for intellectual debate, political contestation and aesthetic experimentation, which was invigorated by a transnational flow of Arab artists and intellectuals and enriched by the encounters between them: Egyptians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians who crossed paths in Beirut, meeting together and weaving in and out of the city’s flourishing art galleries, publishing industry and political movements. For a young artist like Azzawi, Beirut was pregnant with promise. The Iraqi artist’s connections with Beirut developed along two distinct circuits that converged and diverged during the sixties.