Lorna Selim, the Silent Artist

Jawad Selim, originally from Mosul, is considered to be the founder of modern art in Iraq. Born in Ankara in 1921, he was introduced to painting by his father, an officer in the Ottoman military who had been trained in landscape painting at the Military Academy in Istanbul. In 1938, he received a government scholarship to study in Paris. When Germany invaded France in 1939, he relocated to Rome, until he was finally forced to return to Baghdad in 1940.

In 1959, he was asked by the Iraqi government to design a monument to commemorate the July revolution “The Monument of Freedom” in Tahrir Square regarded today as a national Iraqi landmark. He was given complete freedom to design the sculptures, which narrate the struggle of all groups of people for the sake of freedom. He traveled to Italy which was famous for casting bronze. He did not want to leave his English wife Lorna alone in Baghdad with their two baby daughters, so the whole family went with him.

He rented a workshop on Via de Artisti in Florence, and the casting of sculptures took place in the nearby town of Pistoia. Other than the artwork, Jawad had to deal with side matters, such as buying bronze and securing the marble for the mural. Exhausted, and burdened with financial responsibility, he suffered anxiety and was unable to sleep at night. Moreover, he had doubts that people at the Iraqi embassy in Rome were trying to seize money behind his back, and he had reached the point of suspicion of someone plotting against him to prevent him from achieving the monument of freedom, and who was planning to assassinate him.

Lorna had to take her husband to the hospital.

A week after, his health improved and he regained his sanity, but his exit was prohibited because the law forbids leaving psychiatric clinics before three months of treatment. No one dared to intervene -not even the embassy- without the permission of Abdul Karim Qasim, the Iraqi Prime Minister who was ruling the country back then until his downfall in 1963, since he who was the one who sent him on that mission. Only the architect Rifaa Chadirji, who was behind the idea of the mural, had the guts to fly from Iraq and to get his friend out of the clinic. Jawad spent one year and a half trying to shorten the time to return to Baghdad happy with the completion of an edifice, that no other Iraqi artist had, especially regarding its size and location.

In Baghdad, the carvings were placed on the ground, above the sidewalk in Tahrir Square, waiting to be hung. The sculptor Khaled Al-Rahal was excited and climbed the mural, examining the pieces from his high place and cheering admiration. Jawad followed him to cast a look from above, and it was his last glimpse. He had a heart attack the next morning and died on January 23, 1961; he was 42 years old. The artist's body was carried on a van and the funeral kicked off from the Academy of Fine Arts while his students marched wearing black.

Lorna Selim was born in 1928 in the UK. After Jawad Selim’s sudden death, she continued to receive her husband's pension which was 62 dinars. As a result, the artist and architect, Rifaat Chadirji, asked her to supervise the completion of the placement of the sculptural pieces of the “The Monument of Freedom” Mural, since she was an artist, and she accompanied the work. Indeed, she drew the design according to how the plots were suspended, and she used to go to the site daily until it was completed. She was expecting to receive a plot of land as a reward, but all she got was an amount of 3,000 dinars. She was not present during the unveiling of “The Monument of Freedom” as she has not been invited. Lorna died silently on January 23 of this year on the same day when her husband died, 60 years earlier.

Today, we remember her as well as all the great Iraqi artists who made this artistic landmark a reality.

After all the tragedies Iraq went through, Iraqis gather still and protest around this monument whenever the space for living and freedom becomes narrow.