Basil Alkazzi

Basil Alkazzi (باسل القزي; born 1938), is Kuwait-born British visual artist, of Saudi Arabian–Kuwaiti heritage. As a painter he is known for metaphysical and spiritual abstract paintings. He has lived in London and New York City.

Biography
Basil Alkazzi was born in 1938, on a ship in the sea traveling from Kuwait to Britain. His father Hamed Ali Alkazzi, was a merchant and from an Arab family. In early childhood, he was artistic and interested in the arts. Alkazzi attended the Central School of Art in London.

In the 1960s, Alkazzi worked with the human figure as a subject; and after painting for many years, the figure appeared to stretch out into the skyline or became unrecognizable forms.

He had a solo exhibition in 1989 at the Springfield Art Center in Springfield, Illinois. His solo exhibition, "An Odyessy of Dreams" (2014) was curated by Judith K. Brodsky and displayed at the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, Nebraska.

In 1986, he established the Basil Alkazzi Scholarship at the Royal College of Art in London; and a year later in 1987, established the Basil H. Alkazzi Award for young and emerging American painters. Through the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Alkazzi established in 2010 two biennial awards.

Collections and archives
His work is in museum collections, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis; the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York; and at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. His artist files can be found at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives, and the Smithsonian American Art and Portrait Gallery Library.