‘Tamim Al Majd’ fame artist unveils latest works

Prominent Qatari artist Ahmed Al Maadheed of ‘Tamim Al Majd’ fame yesterday unveiled his latest works depicting four iconic Italian personalities and characters, who left an indelible mark in Italy and in the world.
The four colourful portraits Al Maadheed created in his travel to Italy perfectly hang on the rustic walls of Sasso, a recently opened Italian restaurant located at Al Hazm Mall. They represent various spheres of life including science, art, love and exploration. “I created these paintings on the four subjects for around two months,” Al Maadheed told The Peninsula at yesterday’s unveiling.
To get the real inspiration on the four subjects of his art he himself chose, he travelled to Italy visiting particular places such as Florence and Venice where he also painted his works. It is an important part of Al Maadheed’s process of creating his works to get the feel of the place and the right inspiration for his subjects to paint them the way they should be, he said. In doing so, he was able to shed a new light on the already known subjects in Italian history and literature through the works as well as bring authentic Italian ambience to the community here.
One of the paintings portray Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi Montalcini, who is an icon in Italy when it comes to Medicine, while another painting is of Marco Polo, a famous explorer who was one of the first Westerners to take the Silk Road to China. One of the more interesting works is the portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci in which Al Maaheed combines three images in one frame, namely the face of Da Vinci himself, his famous Mona Lisa painting, and the image of Fetrovian man in which Leonardo expressed beliefe in a homogeneity and harmony between the human body and the universe. The famous fictional character Juliet from the play Romeo and Juliet, whose plot is based on an Italian tale completes the series.
What makes the paintings special is not only Al Maadheed’s unique way of articulating the character of his subject through the expression of the face but also his use of hues to tell the story of the subjects of his paintings, such as using red for the portrait of Juliet which is supposed to symbolise love and blue for Marco Polo to depict exploration and adventure. Al Maadheed is a contemporary Qatari artist who, through his works, embraced the world. For him, art is a universal language and a means of educating people and serving the causes of the nation and humanity. The most important of these works is the image of H H the Emir known as “Tamim the Glorious”.