Sayid Akram Sukri

Place: Baghdad

Born: 1910

Death: 1983

Biography:

Akram Shukri, also known as Sayid Akram Sukri, was an Iraqi artist and architect born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1910 and died in 1983. He was the first Iraqi artist to receive an art scholarship to study in England and was also the first Iraqi artist to paint using the Pointillism style. He was instrumental in founding the Society of Artists and Art Lovers in 1941, an art group that shaped Iraq's attitudes to the arts and the role of the arts in the construction of a national identity for the newly created Iraqi state. He worked for the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage, and in his later career, became the Director of the Iraqi Antiquities Laboratory.