Google Doodle pays tribute to Iraq’s best-known artist Naziha Salim; Here’s all you need to know

New Delhi: Today, on April 23, search engine giant Google paid tribute to Iraqi painter Naziha Salim for her contribution to world art. As per Google, the art genius was highlighted by the UAE-based Barjeel Art Foundation in their collection of female artists on this day.

The doodle shows a collage of two pictures wherein Salim is holding a paintbrush in one of the pictures, while the second depicts a rural Iraqi woman whom her work has always stressed upon. This tribute is a felicitous ode to Salim’s painting style and her significant bequest to contemporary Iraqi art.

Salim was born in Istanbul, Turkey in the year 1927. She belonged to a family of artists, shaping her as a fine art creator in her early years. Her father was a painter himself, while her mother was an embroidery artist.

Later, all three of her brothers also chose to work in the fields of art, with her elder brother Jawad being a renowned sculptor in Iraq. Her second brother Su’ad Salim was a designer too, while her third brother Rashid was a political cartoonist.

In terms of education, Salim graduated in painting from the Baghdad Fine Arts Institute. She also became the first woman to be garnered a scholarship to continue her studies in arts at Paris’ Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts.

She studied the fresco and mural painting in Paris and returned to Baghdad to teach at the Fine Arts Institute. She worked as a professor in the institution till she retired.

Salim was quite active in her country’s art community and was the founding member of Al-Ruwwad, wherein artists who have had degrees in arts from abroad would infuse European painting art into the aesthetics of Iraq.

She is also known to author the book “Iraq: Contemporary Art” which depicts the developments in Iraq’s modern art forms. Her work is available at the Sharjah Art Museum and the Modern Art Iraqi Archive.