Hashim Samarchi

Hashim Samarchi was born in 1939 in Mosul, Iraq. He studied painting and drawing at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad from 1954 to 1957, and then at the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Baghdad from 1962 to 1966. In between, he taught drawing in local schools. His work was exhibited in a group exhibition of Iraqi artists at the Sursock Museum in 1965. A scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation led him to pursue a fellowship in the graphic arts in Lisbon from 1967 to 1969. After returning to Baghdad in 1969, he co-founded the New Vision group with Dia al-Azzawi, Ismail Fattah, Muhammad Muhraddin, Saleh al-Jumaie and Rafa al-Nasiri. In the 1970s, he illustrated posters and poetry books and then worked with the Iraqi Ministry of Information on the cultural magazine Afaq Arabiyya. In 1981, he moved to London and worked in the studio of Dia al-Azzawi for the better part of a decade. He has since stopped producing art. His work has been collected by the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut; The Ibrahimi Collection, Amman and Baghdad and the Sultan Gallery, Kuwait.