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PIONEER IN THE ART MOVEMENT IN KUWAIT
Khalifa Al Qattan, is a pioneer in the art movement of Kuwait,with a unique style , -CIRCULISM, based on philosophy.
Khalifa Al Qattan was born in January 1934 in Old Kuwait town in a family of merchants and traders .
 He was still a young student when his potentials in art were discovered. Encouraged by his teacher he was sketching scenes and happenings from everyday life, that made him more deeply interest in everything he saw and fostered the peculiar disposition that characterizes his dramatic compositions of the sixties, seventies and early eighties, which mark his highest attainment in painting and in sculpture .
He began with stencils, betraying in them a humorous tendency that faded by the time he became a professional painter . At seventeen Khalifa became a teacher, among his many subjects he was teaching art . In 1953 he was the first Kuwaiti artist- dilettante having a personal exhibition within the local school festival of that year .Immediately after he was sent to England to study General Wood-work Engineering at the Leicester Institute of Art and Technology;there he also practice art and joined exhibitions. He graduated in Wood-work engineering with honor in 1958 and returned to Kuwait to teach at the new Technical College in Sweikh. He subsequently moved to the Ministry of General Work supervising on building sites . The beginning of the Kuwaiti art movement was in 1958 when the Education Department sponsored the first collective art exhibition in the country ,and was made an yearly event under the name '"Spring Exhibition " . In 1960 the Government Free Atelier was founded and young dilettanti could benefit of teaching courses and material provided free of charge for them . Khalifa Qattan was among the first who attended it . In the Spring of 1962 he was surprising the public and media alike by having a large exhibition in town ,his works were mainly oil colors and few were water-colors from earlier days. He was the first artist to come forth and attracted the attention of the media . Encouraged by the public reaction he then chose some of his works for two more exhibitions abroad. In the Summer of 1962 he was exhibiting in Ferrara , Italy , and in Cairo ,Egypt. Both exhibitions were held in government galleries and evoked the interest of art critics and of the public to the extent that in Ferrara the Assessor of Culture and Youth wrote to his colleagues in Rome for an exhibition of the artist at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in the heart of Rome . Khalifa received an official invitation for July 1964 .
 Due to a report from the Kuwaiti Ambassador in Cairo , Abdul Aziz Hussein, at his return from his tour Khalifa was appointed General Director of the Free Atelier ,which was part of his ministry of News and Guidance. In his exhibition at the oil town of Ahmedy in the fall of 1962 Khalifa was presenting a peculiar new style in the making . By mid 1963 "CIRCULISM" was born ,the new trend was based on philosophy with a strong tendency for human drama .
Exhibited in Kuwait in the Summer of 1963 CIRCULISM caught the media and received good coverage ; a caricature of the artist even appeared on the cover of a magazine and CIRCULISM became synonymous with KHALIFA QATTAN . The minister of News and Guidance, Sheikh Jaber Ali Al Sabah, was impressed by the growing popularity of the young artist and had a full reportage made on him in the prestigious monthly magazine AL ARABI , published by the ministry.
Following his success and recognition in his country Khalifa received many invitations from foreign governments - from Italy, East Germany, Bahrain, Egypt, Qatar, and even from China in 1981 where he was guest for a full month and his exhibition was held in Beijing at the Modern Art Exhibition Hall . Khalifa was the first Kuwaiti artist cooperating with the United Nations's Postal Stamp department since mid sixties and with other local art-related activities.
THE ART MOVEMENT IN KUWAIT
Besides his uniqueness as an artist Khalifa Qattan was largely responsible for spurring the development of the art movement in Kuwait by his example and direct involvement .
Since he became a member of the Free Atelier he had been encouraging other artists to join him making exhibitions in order to awaken public interest in art . Involvement was needed and he  realize that only an Art society would had created a puss . For many years he tried to make the project feasible, eventually in 1967 sufficient votes were gathered to make the Kuwait Plastic Arts Society legale; in 1968 it was officially approved by the Ministry of Social affairs. Khalifa Qattan was unanimously elected President and began to carry out the first objectives . The main purpose of the society was to encouraged every artist to come forth ,an exhibition special to all artists was held yearly in which no one was to be excluded . Another exhibition was held for members, and a third one was for young children .The most ambitious plan was the Kuwaiti Biennale , the long-standing dream of Khalifa that came feasible in 1969 . The Biennale brought the local art movement into focus and evoked a reaction among artists of other Arabian nations . In 1971 the Arab Artists Union was formed in Damascus; Khalifa Qattan was among the founding member representing the Kuwaiti Plastic Arts Society .Khalifa's expectation in the local art movement was not thwarted ;for two decades there was a flare of art activity, enhanced by an exchange of exhibitions ,collective and personal, from abroad .When in the eighties the Kuwait art society began losing its true purpose ,the local art movement suffered and a period of stagnation set in . A change of policy in the nineties has revitalized the Society and given a new prestige .In 1971 Khalifa Qattan was chosen for a special Board , sponsored by the Emir to study the cultural situation in the country .From the report in 1972 emerged the Higher Council for Culture and Letters, of which Khalifa became a member in 1974.Since the art movement began in the sixties ,Khalifa had been searching for a suitable place to hold the stream of exhibitions which intensified with the birth of the Kuwait Art Society. His first objective in becoming part of the Higher Council was to have an exhibition Hall .He was put in charge of finding one and when he located it he had to persuade the minister of Social Affair, to which it belonged ,to released it .The place had been built for social occasions and Khalifa transformed it into a national gallery .Appointed director in it, within the same month he organized the first exhibition for a renown artist from abroad invited by the Council .A tight schedule of shows followed and Khalifa being without an assistant he had to fulfill the role of the organizer, the clark, and public elation officer. At night, when his job was done, he was cutting clips of written material in the local papers concerning art and painting . His intention was to turn the national gallery into a cultural center, with a comprehensive library, an archive and an art museum of donated works from artists using the gallery .His dream vanished when he left the Council few months later , following a misunderstanding with the Council's Director .
 In 1975 Khalifa Qattan caused a sensation in town when he presented a one subject exhibition of 35 paintings under the name 'THE APPLE ' .It was supposed to be a one week show, but was extended to a full month. The implication of sex on society is a delicate and daring subject, but the philosophical works of Khalifa were well received by the general public . Renown writers wrote lengthy comments in magazines and papers and some artists even made cartoons ;Khalifa collected the material in a book titled "The Apple " . Another exhibition dealing in one subject was 'WOMEN I SAW' held in 1978 . It lacked the daring of the previous one and caused no fuss . Another show "The Egg " has been lingering from the early eighties. From mid eighties Khalifa Qattan has been slowing down in his artistic output, and has become less involved in the art movement he championed for two decades .His change in disposition has affected his art .Gone is the drama and satyr of the sixties and seventies ;his blunt criticism on society that characterized his works of Circulism , has given way to peaceful portraits of nature , mainly trees, which he adores , and finds in them a true expression of his soul . After the liberation he has produced some works reminiscent of CIRCULISM , for the drama he lived through during the Iraqi invasion could not be ignored . Khalifa Qattan received many awards specially from foreign nations The latest was the "FIRST ARTIST OF THE YEAR 's " award ,sponsored by the Amir of Sharja ,Sheikh Dr.Sultan Ben Mohammed Al Qasemi,in 1993 during the occasion of the first International Biennale of Sharja.
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