Nazir Nabaa (Syrian, 1938-2016)
Three Figures
signed or inscribed in Arabic '.../Nazir Naba-1979-Damascus' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
43 x 38 in. (109.2 x 96.5 cm)
framed 47 1/2 x 42 1/4 in.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Collection of Muhsin Sayyid Mahdi and Sarah Roche-Mahdi, Cambridge, Massachusetts

N.B.
Muhsin Sayyid Mahdi (1926-2007), the James Richard Jewett Professor Emeritus of Arabic at Harvard University, was a renowned scholar of medieval Arabic and Islamic philosophy. He held visiting professorships at universities throughout the world, offering him and his wife, Sarah Roche-Mahdi, a scholar of medieval and Romantic European literature and thought, the opportunity to build a thoughtful and personally significant collection of art focused on works created in the region of his homeland, Iraq. In later years, the couple spent a great deal of time in Paris, where Mahdi lectured at the Institut du Monde Arabe, participated in seminars, and was a familiar and beloved figure in the cafes and bookshops frequented by intellectuals from all over the Muslim world, many of them former students.