The history of the stages of painting art in the Kurdistan region of Iraq during the twentieth century

Abstract

The current paper attempted to study the history of painting art stages in the Iraqi Kurdistan region during the twentieth century as a corpus of study. Here, the researcher tries to answer these questions: from what date, through what stages, and in what ways did the art of painting enter the Kurdistan region? The results of the study showed that painting art has gone through two major stages in Kurdistan. First, during the first half of the twentieth century (1900), the painting was primarily non-academic and folk art. Then, during the second half (1950 onwards), other than the exitance of the folk painting art, modern and academic painting styles have also entered the field of the Kurdistan region's art through three ways. These ways were: first, through those artists who have visited European countries and the US and became acquainted with different modern painting styles. The second way was by those artists who studied painting at Baghdad University, and the third way is through traditional patterns and handmade items such as carpets, kilims, rugs, etc. The research method is basic-theoretical in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical regarding the method with a historical approach. Literature review and observation were two data collection techniques of the study.