Egyptian Contemporary Artists
Art is a form of expression of the artist’s soul reflecting their inner and outer environments as a mirror to the events and cultures locally and globally.
Egypt has a rich variety of renowned artists across different media like painters, sculptors, singers, actors, writers, musicians, dancers and the list can go on. In this blog, we are featuring four of Egypt’s contemporary artists who have their unique blueprint here in Egypt and worldwide.
Adam Henein, (1929-2020), an Egyptian Sculptor with many awards to his name and his art, awarded for both personal and national art works. Being the head of the designing team, he was involved in the restoration of the Great Sphinx of Giza, from 1989 to 1998.
In 1996, Henien established the Aswan International Sculpture Symposium and in 2014, opened The Adam Henein Museum, displaying his own collection of sculptures and paintings. His creativity envisions nature like birds, horses, concepts of motherhood, patriotism, and also Egyptian symbols as in pyramids, obelisks and even Om Kalthoum the well known singer.
Exhibitions of Adam Henein’s work have been shown around the world including the Louvre in Paris and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
George Bahgoury is an Egyptian painter and sculptor, most famous for being a caricaturist and political cartoonist featured in the local magazines Sabah El-Kheir (Good Morning) and Rose El Youssef from 1953 till 1975.
Having refined his talent in many different scopes of art even in novel writing, cinema and criticism, his work features a somewhat dark, but satirical and raw spirit of Egyptian culture and identity.
Narrating the life of Egyptians day in day out with his bold opinions on certain political leaders, Bahgoury stood firmly for freedom of speech.
Representing the Egyptian Pavillion in 1999, at the Louvre Museum, he won the Silver Medal award with his painting “A Face from Egypt”.
Inji Aflatoun, or Efflatoun, (1924 - 1989), an Egyptian painter who reflected the suffering and struggles of the peasants, craftsmen and more often women, especially being an activist herself rebelling against her own bourgeois family upbringing and also her political current affairs at her time.
Simple but vivid strokes with a lively array of distinct colours, Aflatoun’s spirit shows how fragile and sensitive she was even amidst the uproar she caused being imprisoned in her own home for some time.
Later, she was able to exhibit in Europe, Rome, Paris, East Berlin, Moscow and India. There is a collection of her art in Amir Taz Palace in Cairo, and also in the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, UAE.
Mohamed Abla is an Egyptian multimedia artist who studied in Zurich, Switzerland, taught in the International Summer Academy in Salzburg, and exhibited in Germany and many other locations, founded the Fayoum Art Center in 2007, which is his depiction of a dream come true where artists can come together, learn, work and collaborate.
Abla also opened the first caricature museum in the Middle East displaying a wide collection of local newspapers and magazine cartoons since the early 20th century.
His art features landscapes, folklores and using different techniques and always experimenting with variable materials. He teaches in different art centers around Egypt and exhibits regularly portraying realistic and abstract themes every time with a new and refreshing prospective.
Mohamed Abla is the first to receive the Goethe Medal in 2022, an official decoration from the Goethe-Institute, Germany; and when asked what is the relationship between art and psychology, he said, “ Drawing emerges from the human soul, and therefore, it is directed to the human soul”.