Rashid Al Khalifa

Kingdom of Bahrain, 1952

Moved to the UK in 1972 to study at Hastings College of Arts and Technology in Sussex. Upon his return to Bahrain in 1978, he began his own renditions of his country’s landscapes, producing a series of atmospheric paintings of the desert, sea, and historical sites.

In the decades that followed, Rashid saw his work evolve from landscape painting to figurative work, to gestural abstractions on convex canvases. This shifted in the late 2000s, with his employment of the smooth façade that Aluminium offered, leading to minimalism. Rashid began to consider and equate the susceptibility, mechanics and geometric processes involved in certain aspects of the design and architecture that he visualized in Bahrain’s ever-changing landscape and his resulting works are inherent of a dichotomy; they are powerful and dominating, but concurrently effortless, delicate and meditative. It is clear that there is an undercurrent that flows through Rashid’s oeuvre, driven by his desire to develop and evolve. In many respects, the stylistic transitions that define certain periods, reflect the changing landscape of his country and the passages of his life.