Ismail Shammout’s Odyssey of a People to be sold for the first time
The vast masterpiece depicting the history of Palestine from 1948 to 1980 will be auctioned at Christie’s in Dubai on 18 March, consigned directly from the artist’s family
At six metres long, Ismail Shammout’s (1930-2006) Odyssey of a People is truly gargantuan, a labour of love that took the Palestinian artist six months to complete, painting every day daily. Now it comes to the market for the first time in Christie’s sale of Modern and Contemporary Art on 18 March in Dubai, consigned directly from the artist’s family.
Painted in 1980, the ambitious work attempts to recall the history of Palestine in one scene. As with the Arabic language, the painting reads from right to left. It starts with the 1948 Nabka exodus of Palestinian Arabs during the war, and records the subsequent conflicts of the following decades and the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). There’s a palpable sense of the people’s despair, the symbol of the Palestinian flag and kuffiyeh a glimmer of hope and unity.
The painting also contains personal references to Shammout’s own life experiences. He and his family were among those forced to flee in 1948, to a Gaza refugee camp. Then they moved to Egypt and Shammout to Rome to study before moving to Beirut where he joined the PLO as Director of Arts and National Culture in 1965. Following the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1981, Shammout fled to Kuwait and then, following the Gulf War, to Amman in Jordan. This odyssey represented his dream of his own people returning home, something never achieved in his lifetime.
Odyssey of a People is widely travelled, and not without trauma. First exhibited in 1981 in Dar Al-Karama in Beirut, it was later exhibited in Damascus, Malaysia, Kuwait, the Jordan National Museum and finally Ramallah. There in 2002, on the day of an Israeli incursion the painting was folded within a pillow case and hidden by the director of the museum. Following the director’s death in 2008, Shammout’s widow Tamam Al Akhal made contact with his widow and retrieved the work. It has since hung in the family home in Amman and will be on show in public for the first time since 2002 this March.
Odyssey of a People will be on view at Christie’s at the Jumeirah Emirates Towers, Dubai, from 15-17 March before the sale on 18 March, in which it is estimated to sell for Dhs2.9m-3.3m (US$800,000-900,000). Christies.com