The Emirati artist Hassan Sharif (1951-2016), who has a sensational retrospective at the Sharjah Art Foundation here on the edge of the Persian Gulf, was a born contrarian. Working in a range of seemingly unrelated media and styles, he made art that belongs to no locatable culture, or maybe to several. Dodging definitions, he referred to himself, half-jokingly, as a nomad, though he didn't live like one. Apart from a few youthful years in England, he spent his entire life in the Gulf region, where he is revered today as a pioneer.
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