Richard Saltoun Gallery has opened the first solo exhibition in New York by Dia al-Azzawi, one of the leading figures of Arab modernism. “Let me tell you a story to break the waking night” runs from 5 November to 18 December and surveys several decades of work by the British-Iraqi artist, who was born in Baghdad in 1939 and lives and works in London.

The title comes from a line spoken by Shehrezad in the framing story of “One Thousand and One Nights”, in a translation by Yasmine Seale published in 2021. Storytelling is the thread running through the presentation, from the intimacy of private reading to the communal narrative traditions of the Arab world, and the works on view — artist’s books, paintings and prints — draw on literature and shared oral tradition to express personal and collective histories.

Al-Azzawi is a pivotal figure in Iraqi, Arab and Global South modernisms. In 1969 he co-founded the New Vision Group in Baghdad, and his early paintings, such as “A Wolf Howls: Memories of a Poet” (1968), drew on mythology and folklore. His later work has repeatedly returned to the fate of his home country, most monumentally in “Mission of Destruction” (2004–2007), a 15-metre composition protesting the invasion of Iraq and the looting of its museums, libraries and archives.

The New York survey follows “Excursion Across Time”, his historical overview at Richard Saltoun in London earlier this year, which marked his first presentation in the city he calls home in nearly fifty years. For New York audiences, it is a rare opportunity to encounter the full breadth of an artist whose fusion of words and images has shaped Arab modern art for six decades.