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Rafa Al Nasiri 1940-2013, an ingenious, dedicated painter and printmaker, was born in Tikrit, a city beside the Tigris, approximately 180 km north of Baghdad. He studied art at the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad. He received a scholarship to enhance his academic studies in Beijing, China and was the first Iraqi artist to specialize in graphic art. He was later granted another scholarship to Portugal. To promote the art of printmaking in Iraq, he established a special department in the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad, and later, in 1987, a private graphic studio in Baghdad. He spent 25 years of his life teaching art at the Institute of Fine Arts Baghdad from 1964 to 1989 while freely practicing painting and printmaking. In the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, he moved to Amman, Jordan, to teach art until 1997, when he moved to Bahrain University. In 2003, he settled back in Amman, Jordan, as a full-time artist. Considered one of the leading modern innovators in Iraq and the Arab world, Rafa Nasiri's artworks, throughout his career, have extended wider borders and been displayed in world museums.