Ahmed Alsoudani

Ahmed Alsoudani, who came to the U.S. after fleeing from Baghdad in the mid-1990s, is known for his vividly-colored and surreal acrylic and charcoal canvases, in which distorted, grotesque faces and body parts portray the horrors of war. This motif draws on the artist’s own experiences of recent wars in Iraq, the imagery of devastation and violence evoking a universal experience of conflict and human suffering. Alsoudani's work has been compared to Francisco de Goya's series of prints "Disasters of War" (1810-20) and Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937), and stylistically to Willem de Kooning for his gestural fluency and Francis Bacon for his agonized depiction of modernity. In 2011, Alsoudani was one of five artists representing Iraq in the Venice Biennale, the country’s first time hosting a pavilion in 35 years.