RAMZI GOTHBALDIN BIOGRAPHY

Born in Khanaquine in Kurdistan in 1955.

He completed his training as a graphic artist at the Institute of  Fine Art in Baghdad in 1975
Ramzi’s life as an artist is fed by a wealth memory tied to his identity as an Iraqi Kurd. He shares the history and collective experience of his people to whom he says he feels a responsibility.
In the early 1980’s he became a PUK peshmerga. He worked in a publishing base in the mountains Northeast of Sulaimaniya until the height of Saddam’s Anfal campaign, when in 1988 civilians and peshmergas alike were forced to flee Kurdistan into Iran.
He exhibited his paintings in Tehran shortly after his arrival, which led to an invitation to show his works in France where he is still living and working .
To understand Ramzi’s paintings is to unveil his past . One should mention the thirty yeagrs long confrontation to silence and partisanship which made him take to the mountains, the dangerous path of resistance, the only path to the fragile hope of one day finding freedom.
And yet, it is more tempting to speak of this experience within the language of his paintings as his work does not describe a dark experience but rather sublimes it.
In his paintings, Ramzi’s travel companions become figures which seduce us with their mystery. We don’t know them but we would like to. However vague, they are there, very present.
The successive layers of oils and pastels bear witness to their importance and their depth. We do not belong to their world, but they invite us in gently to share what they hold dearest : a freedom of which we cannot measure the clandestinity.
And even when they become darker, when we can’t recognize them, when they become indistinguishable, they reach out to guide us towards what remains at center of Ramzi’s paintings : the light.
“I know the colour of the night” he recently said in an interview. “When I arrive at my studio, I arrange my colours on my palette an I start to talk. My paintings have a message...I only hope that one day, people will understand”.