The art of war: US lieutenant brings Iraqi paintings to New York

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2008

NEW YORK (AFP) — With fiery reds and black-oil-stained browns criss-crossed with misshapen ladders, Mohammed al-Hamadany paints the violence of Baghdad, the battles over power and the shattered innocence.

For the US military it was the 2003 "Shock and Awe" invasion, but the Iraqi painter ambiguously calls the 25 tall, narrow panels of the time, showing frightened faces in tenement windows and the statue of Saddam Hussein ghoulishly crumpling, the "Night of Fire."

With the massive work he has brought the horrific chaos of the invasion, five years later, to the United States, as the centerpiece of a new exhibition of contemporary art from the Middle Eastern country.

"Oil on Landscape: Art from Wartime Contemporaries of Baghdad," at the Pomegranate Gallery in...