Ziad Zukkari

Ahmad Ziad Zukkari (Ziad Zukkari), (1926 – 11 September 2014) was a Syrian modern artist, painter and calligrapher. Ziad Zukkari is mainly a figurative painter, specialised in traditional scenes that represent traditional architecture and costumes. He also executed postage stamps. He painted most Syrian monuments and costumes. He was active since the mid XIXth century, and was « the first to document the Syrian cultural heritage », « omitting neither a coma nor a period ». The historian Muhammad Bashir Zuhdi (1927–2020) stated that « Zukkari has replaced the photographic camera with brushes ». He painted the old souqs and khans, the monuments of Palmyra, and old popular costumes. The artist and art critique Adib Makhzoum stated that Zukkari is « an important source for documenting local costumes ».

Biography
Ziad Zukkari was born in 1926 in Damascus. At age eight, Ziad Zukkari starts drawing with white or colour chalk the family trips or scenes of daily life on the walls of his family house in Douma. Later, his family leaves Douma to settle in Damascus, in the neighborhood of Al Bahsa Al Baraniyah, in front of the Al Tausiyah mosque (peacocks mosque), where many artists and calligraphers are living. He discovers the atelier of the painter Akram Khalqi located close to Arnous avenue in the neighborhood of Al-Salihiya, and he spends hours there. As he was employee with the Syrian Ministry of Culture, he makes study trips in all governorates in order to systematically document the national heritage.

Works
As he still was a teenager, he participated to a fine arts exhibition in Damascus with a charcoal representation of a Tiger hunting scene in ancient India. While the head of State (under French mandate), Taj al-Din al-Hasani, was delivering a speech during the inauguration ceremony, he made his portrait with pencil. An assistant of the president took the portrait and gave it to the president, and the next morning the portrait was published on the front page of the newspaper Al-Istiqlal Al-Arabi with the author's name and some words of encouragement. From then on, he would never stop drawing.

Teenager, he finds in a magazine a reproduction of a young lady in traditional costume from the region of Hauran, and he notices many imperfections. He decides to go to the Al-Azm Palace in Damascus and shoots traditional costumes with his camera, and later reproduces them with high precision in his atelier.

Zukkari made hundreds of trips in his country, including in the most remote small villages of the North. He met their inhabitants and documented their traditions. The journalist Al-Khaldi stated that he is a reference like no other for researchers in regional costumes and handicrafts. The artist Mamdouh Kashlan considered him as « master of representation of cultural heritage ». His main contribution was to represent folk costumes in their context, by including in his canvas local monuments, whether archaeologic or historic, and handicrafts such as objects used for traditional Arabic coffee. He has painted archaeological and other historic sites in Damascus, Palmyra, Hama, Homs, Deir ez-Zor and As-Suwayda. In particular, he painted the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the Citadel of Aleppo and the famous norias of Hama. He was also invited in Libya to reproduce men and women traditional costumes.

Specialised in traditional costume painting, Ziad Zukkari participates in February 1986 in an international exhibition in Paris under the auspices of the World Tourism Organization, held on the occasion of the seventh International Day of tourism. During this exhibition, entitled « tourism, a vital force for peace », he exhibits reproductions of traditional costumes from various governorates of Syria. In the wake of this exhibition, some of his canvas are exhibited at Le Méridien hotel of Paris on the occasion of the day of Syrian Gastronomy.

Since the onset of his career, he has undertaken to systematically represent the Syrian traditional costumes, especially those that were exhibited in the Al-Azm Palace of Damascus.

Ziad Zukkari has also painted a collection of canvas representing the Palestinian as well as Libyan costumes.

As regards Philately, Ziad Zukkari has drawn Postal stamps as well as fiscal stamps (fees) and stamps for the Engineers Syndicate (stamps for approval of engineering designs). In 1957, on the occasion of the national day of the commemoration of the independence of Syria, he designs a postal stamp representing the President of the Republic Shukri al-Quwatli. From 5 to 21 June 1964, he participates to the international philately exhibition PHILATEC '64 in Paris and wins the silver medal. For the Egyptian Post he has designed an Egyptian stamp on the occasion of the nationalisation of the Suez Canal of 1956, for which he received an award from Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser ,. For the Syrian Post, he has designed in 1973 a stamp representing the entry of Khalid ibn al-Walid in Damascus, and he is also the author of a Syrian stamp commemorating the 1100th anniversary of the death of the Arab surgeon Abu Bakr al-Razi. It is estimated that he is the author of a few dozen stamps.

A quasi-exhaustive collection of paintings representing with a perfect realism well-known monuments and sites didn't fail to attract the interest of producers of postcards. Hence, Zukkari has also acquired a notoriety as author of illustration of postcards already at the beginning of the 1990s. Those postcards have become the most popular of Syria and are now found across the whole world.

He is also the author of official portraits, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hafez el-Assad.

In Septembre 2017, three after his passing, a retrospective exhibition is organised in his memory in the Cultural Center of Mazzeh.

Awards

 * Certificate from the Tishreen University for his contribution to scientific research, 5 October 1991
 * Certificate from the Adham Ismail Centre for Plastic Arts, in recognition of his artistic activity in documenting cultural heritage, 7 September 2005