• Ziad M. Haider | 1954 Maysan, Iraq - 2006 Holland (current residence, Heaven)
  Visual & Commercial Artist, Printmaker, Fashion and Graphic Designer
• Studied Art at the Academy of Fine Art
• Many collective art exhibits in homeland & abroad since 1974
• Several international and national Awards throughout his career (1976-2006)

Tribute and Acclaim

Ziad M. Haider | 1954 Maysan - 2006 Holland (current residence, Heaven)
Visual & Commercial Artist, Printmaker, Fashion and Graphic Designer

Ziad M. Haidar … The Blue Angel

After all, I owe life nothing but Love!

Aside from being a great artist, Ziad was one of the kindest people in the world. He was always, humble, helpful, a defender of those who are in need. However, he was also a heavy drinker and totally into artistic life. He was born in a big middle - class family of eleven brothers and sisters in the city of Amarah/Maysan south of Iraq. The family moved to Baghdad in Most of his brothers and sisters were highly educated and leaning towards socialism ideology. However, as an artist he declined to be a member in any political party, like the Ba’ath Political Party run by the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein.

Consequently, he was fired of his job as head of the art department at the Iraqi Fashion House and was sent to the front to fight in a meaningless Iraq - Iran war that took the lives of almost a million young Iraqis, most of them were very educated ones. Ziad was injured two times, while away from the military he urinated on one of Saddam’s huge Mural-paintings.

Ziad was tortured and sentenced to death, but instead he was imprisoned for five years and released through a nation's pardon. He fled Iraq and settled in Amman, Jordan, where he met and got married to Mayyada, an Iraqi intellectual and a very beautiful woman. The five years of torture injured his back permanently and impacted him and his marriage psychologically which led to his divorce, because he thought that his wife deserve a better life. However, he did not stop being kind, humble, and a very sweet person, despite the fact that he became more addicted to alcohol.

Ziad spent his last few years in the Netherlands as a full time artist, moving from one woman to another painting all the way to until his death in a tragic accident on Tuesday June 27, 2006. He fell off the stairs when he was leaving his studio one early morning to buy some oil colors tubes and a bottle of Arak (Iraqi Tequila). Ziad the Iraqi bohemian Modigliani, never quit on art, drinking, and being a womanizer, his last girlfriend was Paula an artist from Holland.
Ziad painted his path all the way to heaven by loving everybody and hating no one, not even those who tortured him for years. He told me once; “brother, do not let your hate of the evil ones take you away from art, we both were tortured and sentenced to death, but we both can prove to the entire world that we are Mesopotamians, the people who gave the world its first civilization.
If you want to fight back, my advice to you is to keep painting, drinking and exploring volcanic love!”

• Amer Fatuhi, Art Critic - Member of The International Art-Critic / Paris aica
  Former Art Critic Editor / Director of Art Department 1980-1984 Arts / Funoon Magazine

• Subject: Painful Departure
• Technique: Mixed Media & Collage
• Measurements: 27 x 19 Inches
• Date: 1993
• Price: $15,000
• Condition: Excellent
• Signature: Yes

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