Yousuf Al-Hamid

Yousuf Ahmed Al-Hamid is a visual artist, art consultant, writer and teacher whose work has contributed to Qatar’s cultural development. He has represented Qatar at international events and exhibited at home and abroad, using art to document the country’s environment, customs and traditions.

Born in 1955, he grew up in Al Jasra in a middle-income Qatari family. His father worked for Qatar Petroleum in Dukhan, while his mother devoted herself to raising the children according to Islamic values and Qatari customs. As the long-awaited boy after three daughters, he received particular affection at home.

Al Jasra, beside the sea, was an equally formative environment. A neighbour, Marzouq Al-Shamlan, owned the area’s only black-and-white television and watched Aramco Television in the early 1960s. The children’s programme “Baba Hattab”, presented by a multi-talented Palestinian broadcaster who drew, acted, composed, sang and performed comedy, captivated him—especially its drawing segment—and first revealed the direction of his talent.

He filled his father’s small diaries with drawings and used charcoal ash from his mother’s cooking to draw on the walls. He also borrowed paint from the tools his father kept for carpentry and decorating. With family encouragement, he organised his first exhibition in the corridor of the family home, invited neighbourhood children and even held an opening ceremony.

After primary school, a Ministry of Education scholarship took him to Cairo in 1972 to study art and education; he graduated in 1976. On returning to Qatar, he worked for two years as an art-education supervisor before another scholarship took him to the United States in 1979. He earned the highest qualification in fine art from Mills College in California in 1982.

Back in Qatar, he returned briefly to the Ministry before Qatar University seconded him as a visiting lecturer. He remained there until 2004, helped establish the Department of Art Education and taught foundations of drawing, art appreciation and art history. His students included His Excellency Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammed Al Thani.

He was among the first Qataris sent abroad to specialise in art. Although the state supported young artists, he still had to challenge a social expectation that high-achieving students should choose medicine, engineering or another conventional profession. He chose instead to build an independent path in the arts.

His work with Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammed Al Thani helped shape major cultural projects. He contributed to the vision for museums of Arab art, Orientalist art and arms, and together they developed the plan for the Museum of Islamic Art with the support of His Highness the Father Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. He also helped establish Friends of Fine Art in the GCC, whose members exhibited across the Gulf as well as in Spain, Germany, the Dominican Republic and Tunisia.

He represented Qatar at international events, including the 1986 Baghdad Festival for Asia, and received awards in Riyadh, Doha, Kuwait and Oman. His experimentation also produced handmade paper from discarded Qatari palm fronds, a material he developed through sustained trials and used for art, invitations and formal correspondence.