Background
Mr. Radwi was born in Mecca, Makkah, Saudi Arabia, in 1939. His mother was a painter and nurtured his young talent, actively encouraging him to pursue art.
Abdul Radawi
Largo Dino Frisullo, 00153 Roma RM, Italy
in 1964 Abdul Radawi studied at Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Italy.
Calle de Alcalá, 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
in 1979 Abdul Radawi studied at Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, Spain.
Mr. Radwi was born in Mecca, Makkah, Saudi Arabia, in 1939. His mother was a painter and nurtured his young talent, actively encouraging him to pursue art.
In the mid-1950s Abdul Radwi set himself apart from his contemporaries by winning the first official painting competition while in High School in Saudi Arabia. Still in school, Mr. Rawdi’s work The Village, earned him great merit. These accomplishments foreshadowed his rise to notoriety.
Mr. Rawdi’s fascination and love for art never wavered. In 1961 he travelled to Rome to study Fine Arts, solidifying his artistic standing in the Saudi art community. Abdul Radwi was the first Saudi to study abroad and return to Riyadh as an art teacher, creating a Western inspired artistic instruction. Later, he obtained a doctorate from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1979.
Mr. Radwi started his career as a teacher of fine arts in Makkah but became much involved with the government of arts. From 1968-1974 he was director of the Jeddah centre for fine arts and later (1980-1992) director-general of the culture and arts city of Jeddah.
In 1973 Abdul Radwi spent time in Madrid were he was action director of the Association of Arab artists. Mr. Radawi’s long artistic career is rich with many different paintings. He himself, however, was personally very proud of two of them, "Recitation of Qur’an" and "Old Buildings in Makkah". Mr. Radwi signed this work twice: in 'latin' on the lower left and in arabic on the lower right, that demonstrated that Radwi was painting for an international audience.
Abdul Radwi has had several gallery and museum exhibitions, including at the Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art. His family maintain a website with some of his work and say it can also be seen in museums of modern art in Jordan, Brazil, Marocco, Spain and Tunisia. His ability to merge popular culture and sentiments with newly acquired artistic techniques serves as a precursor to contemporary Saudi art today.
Abdul Radwi's paintings dealt mostly with Saudi lifestyle and he is said to have believed that Saudi artists must always keep an eye on their national identity.
Quotations:
"As Saudis we have a huge resource in our own traditions and costumes: the dances, clothes, houses that differ from one tribe to another."
"My works were shot down in exoticism, irony and surprise, while the peoples’ visual imagination in that era was held by representation and copying from reality."