The exhibition revolves mainly around two works, Tower of Babel N° 5 and The Massacre at Al-Rehab Palace, as well as a set of sketches which bear witness to the artist’s journey until he was able to create his final work. On the one hand, it can be seen as a prolonged artistic investigation into the Tower of Babel, inspired by Juan Luis Montero Fenollós and approached from the perspective of deconstruction and destruction as a metaphor for historical and contemporary chaos. On the other, his interest in social art and Iraq’s historical memory are given form in The Massacre at Al-Rehab Palace (2025), in which he reflects from a historical and autobiographical perspective on the assassination of King Faisal II, combining documentation and imagination, to pay tribute to this monarch while evoking the violence of the event, with references to Goya and Picasso, in a line of work which focuses on the killings that have occurred in the country and the collective trauma it has endured.

Hanoos Hanoos (Kufa, 1958) is a painter, etching artist and professor. Hanoos earned his bachelor’s degree and PhD in Fine Arts at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He began his studies at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad (1974-1979) and, after traveling throughout Europe, he completed his training in Madrid, where he earned his doctorate with a “cum laude” distinction on the work of Al-Wasiti. He has lived in Madrid since 1981.

He has held 41 solo exhibitions, taken part in more than 100 group exhibitions and received 41 awards for his paintings, as well as fellowships from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Hispanic-Arab Institute. His work, which includes more than 4,000 originals and numerous engravings and drawings, forms part of public and private collections both in Spain and abroad.

The exhibition “From Babel to the Last King of Iraq: An age-old civilization” is being held as part of the celebrations of Casa Árabe’s twentieth anniversary, which the institution will be holding throughout 2026, and forms part of our ”Country Focus: Iraq,” to which a portion of our activities will be devoted during the first half of the year.