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Vittore
Querel Wrote
"…His face is smiley
and humorous, his eyes are sparkling and clever. You always find him working:
he paints, sculptures, moulds, clay or plasticine, works with resin, prepares
graphics and creates beautiful small bronzes.
No other Arab man has ever been so industrious as he is.
Ali Hashim Abdul Karim Al Jabiri , name surname old family, and even a certain
degree of kindred with the Prophet. He
tells me that, smiling, but proud.
He has a fine stroke. Paints beautiful sketches in precise lines. Exquisite.
Color has no secret to him. He likes light tints. He dominates tonalities. He
lays, mixes colors, with kindness and infinite precision.
He was an excellent Student of Fazzini and Avenali.
From them he took as much as he could, but with extreme discretion. We can sense, in his art, the
heritage f both the sculptor and the painter.
From Fazzini he got the taste for
beautiful shapes; from Avenali, the taste for light tonalities,
Ancient influences are also sensed: he learned lessons from the Sumarians, the
Greeks, the Romans, and from the Italian Renaissance.
He put all the things he studied to practice and he has now his personality. I
consider his "Couple", his strong point, is really exceptional, rich
in flavor and in personality; those faces are serene, although decomposed; they
are intensely dramatic, the eyes are penetrating.
There is a female figure, which is also precious.
It is limpid and fresh, with precise contours and refined sensibility.
There are also many delicate small bronzes, they seem jewels; like flowers,
they bloomed suddenly.
Then, other beautiful female figures with their drawn, polished faces. I
was enchanted. I was the woman,
with the half-moon laid on her pale shoulders. It was as if a “dream eye” was
moving around her.
Her hair is nearly iridescent, although you can’t see its color. This sculpture was inspired one night by the Roman San Vito.
But the moon, just risen, and other mysterious signs, are rich in Islamic symbolism. Al Jabiri is really attached to his country, to its customs and people. And
he is surely right.
I think Ali must have really loved Martini.
I will take him one day to Anticoli, where there is a magic fountain, a kind of trapezoid (is that how
we call it?), in the square, beasts carved around its base.
There is also a marvelous plaster in the small museum, to be considered the
proof of the “La Disperata” (close to it, a beautiful plaster of Ivan
Mestrovic, and a beautiful portrait of Felice Carena).
I was saying that Al Jabiri is influenced by Martini, even if he doesn’t know
him. Some could even be the faces
of the same characters Ali has chosen for his works!
Ali Al Jabiri was born in Amara, in 1948.
He is open to the most modern experiment.
He experiments with everything. He works with tin, iron,
bronze, plastic materials, resin, and so on.
He has been listening to the latest signals of the world of art. As his painting is beautiful, smooth and magically colored, so his sculpture is sensible,
personal, rich in annotation and cheerful in its hardness. He
started well (at the school of Jawad Salim, one of the best sculptors in Iraq)
and keeps on going well.
His eyes are attentive, open, ready to
capture everything, his brain is always aware, his muscles are vibrant.
He will surely make his own way in life. Surely.”
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