Nasser AlYousif

The monograph published by Skira in Milan in February 2019: 196 pages, in English and Arabic, the first full-length study of the artist to appear from an international art publisher.

It grew out of the research behind the 2017 retrospective at Bin Matar House. Beginning with the twelve works held by the Bahrain National Museum, more than six hundred works were catalogued and documented with the family, and the book sets that catalogue alongside a commissioned essay by Dr Maha Azize Sultan of the Lebanese University, an introduction by Melissa Enders-Bhatia of the Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Center, an artist biography, and timelines of twentieth-century Bahrain. Its stated aim was to become the reference source on the artist and to open the wider modern art movement in Bahrain to research.

A Skira imprint places the work in the same catalogue as Etel Adnan and Dia Al-Azzawi, and for an institution considering an acquisition the existence of this book is often the difference between an artist who is known and one who is documented.

The book remains in print. Shown here are the cover, the opening of the introduction, and two spreads from the plates, so that its scope is visible without reproducing the edition itself.