Across Time on Dover Street: A Sunlit Encounter with Dia Al-Azzawi
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London does not often surrender its sun so generously. Yet on that particular late afternoon the light settled softly over Mayfair, bouncing against the pale façades of Dover Street. It was the kind of unexpected brightness that makes the city feel, for a fleeting moment, almost Mediterranean.
I found myself walking there with my dear friend, journalist Othman Al Omeir, a man whose memory of people and stories stretches across decades and continents. Dover Street, of course, is a small universe of its own in London—home to some of the city’s most intriguing galleries, where quiet doors often open into entire worlds of imagination.
That evening we had come for a private exhibition: Excursion Across Time, a historical overview of the work of the remarkable Iraqi artist Dia Al-Azzawi, presented at the elegant Richard Saltoun Gallery.
Othman had known him for more than thirty years.“Come,” he said with the ease of someone introducing an old friend rather than a celebrated artist. And so he did.
Al-Azzawi, now in his eighties, carries himself with a sharpness that defies time. His eyes remain alert, his voice steady, his presence unmistakably that of a man who has spent a lifetime observing the world through both scholarship and imagination. Before becoming internationally recognised as one of the pioneers of Iraqi modernism, he worked as an archaeologist and museum curator—an origin story that resonated deeply with me.
As a child growing up in South America, I dreamt of becoming an archaeologist myself. I was fascinated by ancient civilisations, particularly the Sumerians. Their symbols, their myths, their monumental silence across millennia stirred something profound in me. Standing there, speaking with Al-Azzawi, I realised that the same fascination had shaped his artistic language.
His work carries an archaeology of memory.
Dia Al-Azzawi is far more than a painter. He is a prolific multidisciplinary artist—painter, sculptor, draftsman, printmaker, publisher and designer. His visual language draws from Arab heritage, folklore and natural history, transforming them into contemporary works that feel both deeply rooted and universally resonant.
He was the first Iraqi artist to hold solo exhibitions outside Iraq, and in 1968 he wrote a manifesto titled Towards a New Vision. It emerged in response to the collapse of political pan-Arabism, yet it ignited an important cultural movement that led to initiatives such as the al-Wasiti Festival (1972), the Union of Arab Artists (1973) and the Arab Art Biennales beginning in 1974.
When he left Iraq in 1976 and settled in London, he did not abandon the region that shaped him. Instead, he carried it with him. His exhibitions continued across West Asia, North Africa, Europe and the United States. From the 1980s onwards he produced more than one hundred artist’s books inspired by Arabic literature—works where poetry, calligraphy and image merge into visual narratives that span centuries.
History, however, is not always gentle.
The wars and sanctions that devastated Iraq shaped another dimension of his work. His long-running monochrome series Land of Darkness, begun in 1991, reflects the violence and loss experienced during those years. His monumental painting Sabra and Shatila Massacre (1982–83), now housed at Tate Modern, stands among the most powerful artistic responses to the tragedy that unfolded in Lebanon.
Yet despite the political weight carried in his work, Al-Azzawi’s art never loses its poetic core.
Inside the gallery that evening, vast canvases glowed with colour—crimson, cobalt, gold—while fragments of Arabic script drifted across surfaces like echoes from ancient manuscripts. The dark almond-shaped eyes of Sumerian statues appeared within mythological lovers and wandering figures. Ziggurats, textiles, poetry and fragments of ancient symbols merged effortlessly into compositions that felt both timeless and profoundly human.
What struck me most was the ease with which he moves across centuries within a single work. Ancient Mesopotamia, medieval Arabic literature and modern political history coexist without conflict.
History, for him, is not distant. It is alive.
Curated by Louisa Macmillan, the exhibition marks nearly fifty years since Al-Azzawi made London his home and only his second solo presentation in the city since 1978. Alongside major paintings are works on paper never before exhibited, as well as archival material from his studio that traces the journey of an archaeologist who helped shape Iraqi modernism in the 1960s.
Today his works reside in some of the world’s most respected collections, including The British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, alongside institutions across Paris, Washington, Lisbon, Doha and Abu Dhabi.
And yet, in person, he remains wonderfully grounded.
At one moment during our conversation he paused, studying my outfit with the attentive eye of a painter, and complimented the colour combination. I must admit—it was a small moment that pleased me greatly. When a master of colour notices your palette, you accept it as a quiet honour.
Later, after lingering over several paintings, Othman and I stepped back into the cool London evening. The galleries of Dover Street had begun to quieten, and the city slowly returned to its familiar rhythm.
We walked to a nearby pub and ordered drinks—the kind of place where conversations stretch easily into the night. We spoke about art, memory, history, and about the extraordinary way certain people manage to carry entire civilisations within their work.
It had been an unusually sunny day in London.
And it ended, as the best evenings often do, with good company, thoughtful conversation, and the quiet satisfaction of having met a mind that continues to travel—quite literally—across time.
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