Azzawi was born in Iraq in 1939, and has degrees in archaeology and fine art from Baghdad University. He lives in London and is a full-time artist. Internationally renowned, he has exhibited his work throughout the Arab world; and in the West in Britain, Switzerland, France, Germany, India, Poland, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Canada, the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, exYugoslavia and Norway.

His works are in many public collections, including the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert, London; the Library of Congress, Washington; the Bibliohèque Nationale and the Institut du monde arabe, Paris; the Museums of Modern Art in Baghdad, Damascus, Amman, Tunis and Doha; also in and

A portrait of a visitor 1995 Acrylic on canvas. 48 x 48 cm

Azzawi private collections including the Gulbenkian collection, Barcelona, the World Bank, Washington DC; at Jeddah and Riyadh International Airports; and the British Airways collection.

Azzawi has produced a number of limited editions of volumes of prints from etchings, silkscreens and lithographs,

including We Are Not Seen But Corpses, One Thousand and One Nights, Homage to Jewad Salim, Beirut Suite, Land of Salt, The Will of Life and Book of Love; and with poets Al-Jawahiri Verses, Adonis, Majnun Laila (with Bahraini poet Qassim Haddad. He has also painted the poems of poets Saadi Youssef and Salah Stetié.

Above: Links of Memory, No 1, Gouache on paper, 1989 Front cover: Untitled, 1981