Today, April 23, Google Doodle is dedicated to and celebrates the work and life of Naziha Salim, the Iraqi contemporary art genius. On this day in the year 2020, Salim was spotlighted by the Barjeel Art Foundation in their collection of female artists, Google said.
The doodle for today is a fitting tribute to the style in which Salim painted and her contribution to the arts. Today's doodle is a combination of two photos - Salim holding a brush and her work which always stressed upon rural Iraqi women.
Notably, Iraq's President Jalal Talabani had once described Salim as "the first Iraqi woman who anchored the pillars of Iraqi contemporary art".
Salim was born in the year 1927 in Istanbul, Turkey. Her father was a painter and her mother was an embroidery artist. Salim also had three brothers who all worked in the arts. Her brother Jawad was widely known as Iraq’s most influential sculptor. Her brother Su'ad Salim was a designer and her third brother Rashid was a political cartoonist.
Coming from such an artsy family, Salim was inspired to create from a very young age.
Salim studied painting and graduated with distinction from the Baghdad Fine Arts Institute. Salim, later, also became the first woman to be awarded a scholarship to continue her studies at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Salim specialised in fresco and mural painting in Paris. After completing her studies and taking exposure in a foreign country, Salim returned to Baghdad to work at the Fine Arts Institute and taught there till she retired.
She was also active in Iraq’s arts community. Salim was one of the founding members of Al-Ruwwad, a community of artists that study abroad and then inculcate European art techniques into the Iraqi aesthetic.
Salim also authored "Iraq: Contemporary Art", a handy resource for the early development of Iraq’s modern art movement. Salim's artwork is available at the Sharjah Art Museum and the Modern Art Iraqi Archive.
