Madhat Kakei is born as a Kurd in Kirkuk in northern Iraq, and has aspired for painting since he met with an old, travelling painter on a mountain lane in his childhood.

After his study in Bagdad fine arts school for five years, he studied in Madrid Arts Academy for three years, and during his student age of the latter he has had his solo-exhibitions in Spain and Iraq.

In 1984 for the Iran-Iraq war he was mobilized as a soldier, but he escaped from the front line only by his desire to depict paintings, and at last arrived Sweden.

The reason why he chosed Sweden is not only that a lot of Kurdish emigrants lived there already, admitted Swedish citizenships after staying two years, but also probably because he heard that if he becomes one of the members of the Swedish Artists Association, he can be supplied big room for his living and studio.

But Kakei visited Japan in 1985, looking to a classmate of Madrid Academy, and stayed almost one year in a big, old house rented by his friend in Chiba, having his solo-exhibitions in Tokyo and Chiba.

I recognize him in these exhibitions, and appreciated his intense power of expression and high sprit of human images- like icons mainly through his concise touches of black ink on cavases, papers, sliding paper screens and fragments of bamboos of black.

Since an art critic, Tohru Sunouchi, mentioned abut Kakei in the last issue just before his death of his reputed serial essay "Capricious Museum" on a representative art magazin, solo-exhibitions has been organized by several galleries in provincial cities of Japan too.

He lives in a Stockholm suburb as his base, showing his works in Madrid, Paris, German cities, New York and also in Tokyo and other Japanese cities almost every year.

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