Mahmoud Hammad Collection

Mahmoud Hammad (1923-1988) was a foundational contributor to the formation of modern art institutions in Syria. Trained in both painting and printmaking, he worked across media over the course of his career: as a painter, a printmaker, a medal engraver and a sculptor. He drew the admiration of other Syrian artists for his in-depth knowledge of compositional methods and color properties. His knowledge of technique made him a consummate educator and from 1960 until his death in 1988 he not only taught painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts (Kulliyat al-Funun al-Jamila) in Damascus but also rose to become head of the department, followed by serving as Dean of the school.

Born in 1923, Hammad completed primary school at the Italian School of Damascus and secondary school at the prestigious Jawdat al Hashemi school. At the age of sixteen, Hammad traveled to Italy for a study trip. Throughout the 1940s he participated in group exhibitions organized by emergent civic organizations, including helping to establish the Studio Veronese in Damascus (est. 1941) and participating in the Association of Syrian Artists, based in the neighborhood of Abu Rummana, in the 1950s. Hammad was an early recipient of a binational fellowship to complete a degree at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. He studied abroad in Italy from 1953 to 1957, there participating in numerous exhibitions and prize competitions. Upon his return to Syria, he fulfilled his fellowship obligations by teaching art for two years in Daraa, to the south of Damascus (1958–1960). The two years he spent in this rural community are sometimes described as a period of social realism, or as his "Houran period," referring to his interest in depicting the conditions of the agricultural region and its laborers.

The 1960s were a significant decade for Hammad's career as well as for the development of an arts infrastructure in Syria. Hammad was among the first Syrians hired to teach at the Faculty of Fine Art upon its creation in 1960 and its formalization as a degree-granting faculty in 1962. He helped to recruit an international cohort of artists to teach at the Faculty and advocated in the press for the value of a modern curriculum integrating studies in formal experimentation and abstract composition in addition to academic realist techniques. Over the same decade, his own painting took an abstract turn. He exhibited compositions derived from the formal qualities of Arabic writing in major international exhibitions, including the São Paulo Art Biennial and the Venice Biennale.

Around 1963, Hammad began to exhibit a type of painting that became his most recognized achievement as an artist: painterly compositions based on the modern, artistic manipulation of the letter forms of the Arabic language (later to be dubbed horoufiyah, or ḥurūfiyya). Because Hammad first exhibited his experiments in this vein in the early 1960s, he predated the pan-regional 1970s florescence of Arab artists seeking to incorporate Arabic writing into fine art compositions. For his work with Arabic writing as a basis for painterly compositions, he is considered a pioneer of not only Syrian modern art but also Arab art in the twentieth century.

In 1967, he won a grant from UNESCO as a creative artist, and in 1969 was awarded the State Prize for Fine Arts. Along with Professor Abdo Kass-hout, in 1979, he won the competition to design "The Unknown Soldier" monument in Damascus, which was built and completed in 1994. His works are preserved in the National Museum of Damascus, the Ministry of Culture and Foreign Affairs, and in private art collections in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Italy, France, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Russia, and the United States of America.

Hammad died in 1988 in Damascus, Syria.

Lubna Hammad is an architect based in Amman, Jordan. The daughter of the late artist Mahmoud Hammad, she is responsible for the artist's estate, including both his works of art and his archival papers. She maintains the artist website, http://www.mahmoudhammad.com/. In November 2022 she participated in a program at the Abu Dhabi Art Fair organized by al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, "Saloua Raouda Choucair & Mahmoud Hammad - Preserving a Legacy: Custodians of Arab Art."