BAGHDAD: Rifat Chadirji, known as the father of modern Iraqi architecture, died late Friday in the United Kingdom after contracting the novel coronavirus, friends and Iraqi officials have said.
The 93-year-old architect and photographer is credited with designing some of Iraq’s most well-known structures, including the iconic “Freedom Monument” in the now protest hub of Baghdad’s Tahrir Square its name.
“He was a giant of 20th century Iraq,” said Caecilia Pieri, a scholar focusing on Baghdad’s modern architecture who knew Chadirji well.
Top Iraqi officials including President Barham Saleh and caretaker premier Adel Abdel Mahdi mourned him on Saturday.
“With the death of Rifat Chadirji, architecture in Iraq and the world has lost its modern lung,” Saleh wrote.
Born in Baghdad in 1926, Chadirji studied in London and returned to Iraq in the 1950s to design his magnum opus — an elegant arch entitled “The Unknown Soldier” — as well as the capital’s post office and other public buildings.
But when the Baathist regime came to power, it tore down “The Unknown Soldier,” replaced it with a statue of Saddam Hussein and tossed Chadirji into the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, where he remained for 20 months.
He wrote about the experience in “The Wall Between Two Darknesses,” relating how Saddam had him released from prison to design a conference center.
Chadirji moved to Beirut a few years later and lived abroad during most of the devastating 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, the 1990 Gulf War, a decade of international sanctions and the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.
When he returned to Iraq in 2009, he was scarred by what he found.
“I cannot believe what has happened to the buildings in Baghdad, everything has been almost completely destroyed,” Chadirji said at the time.
In 2019, another one of his famed buildings was torn down: the National Insurance Company in Mosul, a seven-story building from where the Daesh group thew men accused of being gay to their deaths.
The structure was ravaged by the months-long fight to oust Daesh from Mosul and a municipal committee later decided to demolish what was left of it saying it could not be restored.
The NIC building was seen as a prime example of modern Iraqi design, with rows of slim archways and projected windows reminiscent of Iraq’s beloved “shanasheel.”
Chadirji had been a longtime advocate of preservation, working even under Saddam to halt the demolition of traditional Iraqi architecture in Baghdad.
“A people that cannot take care of its creations is a people without a memory,” he said in 2009.
Father of modern Iraqi architecture dies of COVID-19
https://arab.news/ctj67
Father of modern Iraqi architecture dies of COVID-19
- The 93-year-old architect and photographer is credited with designing some of Iraq’s most well-known structures including the iconic “Freedom Monument”
- Born in Baghdad in 1926, Chadirji studied in London and returned to Iraq in the 1950s to design his magnum opus
Sotheby’s to bring coveted Rembrandt lion drawing to Diriyah
DUBAI: Later this month, Sotheby’s will bring to Saudi Arabia what it describes as the most important Rembrandt drawing to appear at auction in 50 years. Estimated at $15–20 million, “Young Lion Resting” comes to market from The Leiden Collection, one of the world’s most important private collections of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art.
The drawing will be on public view at Diriyah’s Bujairi Terrace from Jan. 24 to 25, alongside the full contents of “Origins II” — Sotheby’s forthcoming second auction in Saudi Arabia — ahead of its offering at Sotheby’s New York on Feb. 4, 2026. The entire proceeds from the sale will benefit Panthera, the world’s leading organization dedicated to the conservation of wild cats. The work is being sold by The Leiden Collection in partnership with its co-owner, philanthropist Jon Ayers, the chairman of the board of Panthera.
Established in 2006, Panthera was founded by the late wildlife biologist Dr. Alan Rabinowitz and Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan. The organization is actively engaged in the Middle East, where it is spearheading the reintroduction of the critically endangered Arabian leopard to AlUla, in partnership with the Royal Commission for AlUla.
“Young Lion Resting” is one of only six known Rembrandt drawings of lions and the only example remaining in private hands. Executed when Rembrandt was in his early to mid-thirties, the work captures the animal’s power and restless energy with striking immediacy, suggesting it was drawn from life. Long before Rembrandt sketched a lion in 17th-century Europe, lions roamed northwest Arabia, their presence still echoed in AlUla’s ancient rock carvings and the Lion Tombs of Dadan.
For Dr. Kaplan, the drawing holds personal significance as his first Rembrandt acquisition. From 2017 to 2024, he served as chairman of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage, of which Saudi Arabia is a founding member.
The Diriyah exhibition will also present, for the first time, the full range of works offered in “Origins II,” a 64-lot sale of modern and contemporary art, culminating in an open-air auction on Jan. 31 at 7.30 pm.
