Contemporary abstract art in Iraq: An analysis of geometric and lyrical paintings

This study was founded on the desire to understand contemporary Iraqi abstract art in order to better clarify the foundations and aspects of abstraction. Abstraction is the reduction of everything that surrounds us from its reality, and its reformulation with a new artistic vision in which the artist's sense is manifested through colors, movement and imagination. Abstract art and philosophy are closely related because abstraction has a deep philosophical aspect in reading paintings. In the thesis, the two most prominent trends, namely geometric abstraction and lyrical abstraction, their most prominent artists are mentioned before giving information on Iraqi art in general and contemporary abstract art in particular. As the core study of the thesis, a sample of paintings by Iraqi artists is analyzed. Through the analysis, the differences among the abstraction styles were identified, such as the method of color formation.