It is well known that the task of writing about modern art in Egypt is not an easy one. The notable lack of scholarly material and historical analysis, as well as written and photographic documentation, makes it a particularly challenging pursuit. As it turns out, writing specifically about abstract art during the period of 1910 - 1970 is even more perplexing. While the key texts on modern Egyptian art only touch briefly upon abstract art, the oral testimonies I collected tended to be cursory and frequently detoured from the subject. The interviews I conducted with private collectors and museums, as well as friends and families of the artists, rarely stretched beyond an acknowledgement of a few abstract practitioners, and generally came to the conclusion that the movement never really took off. After being confronted with what felt like an absence of information, the nature of this essay changed. Rather than submitting a generic piece of writing that includes a historical ‘list’ of artists and their output as I had originally intended to do, this paper instead meanders through time and meditates upon why abstract art from the 20th century received comparatively little attention. Given the limited scope of this paper and scarcity of resources, I look at three prominent abstract artist to discuss these broader issues surrounding abstract art in Egypt.

 

Pieced together from ramblings and contradictions, wanderings and excavations, gaps and discoveries, while time-hopping between decades, the premise of this paper is that during this period artistic production was determined by two competing forces; a ruling minority who monopolised the arts for a nationalist agenda or to endorse their social position, and an avant-garde counterpart. This resulted in an emphasis on figurative art, and prevented abstract art in all its obtusity from becoming a significant movement in Egypt. I begin in the 1930s with the revolutionary Art and Liberty Group who rebelled against the prevailing cultural ideology of the landholding elites. Although figurative and representational artwork employing subversive techniques was their principle style, the groups over-association with surrealism has served to overwrite any thorough record of the groups engagement with abstract art. I attempt to square this a little and testify to the groups fundamental role in the evolution of abstract art in Egypt by taking a look at Foued Kamel’s poster artwork for one of Art and Liberty final exhibitions, Vers L’inconu. The transition into total abstraction for several of the members of the Art and Liberty group seemed inevitable, yet this shift was slow and delayed. Like Foued Kamel, Ramses Younan also become a prominent Egyptian abstract artist. However, resistance from a public who, since the beginning of the century, had been indoctrinated in figurative and representational art, stagnated this process. As we continue to wade through the decades, we come to the 1952 revolution. The cultural programme of the old regime was replaced by state-patronised art for the purpose of suppressing political mobilisation and garnering support for nationalist and industrialisation projects. While this period saw an increased interest in abstract art, the State’s control over cultural production and the nepotistic structure determining the artists’ success actually hindered artistic development. An exception to this is Mounier Canaan, who although considered a non-entity in the ministry, still found international success at this time. Despite what had been adverse conditions to producing abstract art, Foued Kamel, Ramses Younan and Mounier Canaan continued to develop their styles in the field of abstract painting. These three artists have been vital to my narration of abstract art in Egypt from 1910-1970, not only because they received widespread recognition for their work, but because their individual experiences reveal key moments in this largely uncharted art history.

 

The impact that a social structure favouring land-holding elites had on cultural production in 20th century Egypt is inescapable. This was a period when the ruling class had a monopoly on culture and artistic production was used to further their own political agenda. Those elites who sought to maintain the hegemony of their interests as large landowners favoured a programme of a national renaissance in the arts, or Nahda [1]. The Nahda paradigm sought to cultivate culture for elite intellectual development, uphold Egypt’s ruling class and justify their rule over the masses, and re-imagine the modern nation-state of Egypt. In many ways the ideological utilisation of culture began in earnest in 1908 with the founding of Egypt’s most prestigious cultural institution, The School of Fine Art [2]. In addition to being considered the first professional institution for art training, the school’s aristocratic patronage made it clear that it was intended to be an elite institution. This was a period when Egypt was still under British occupation, as such, during its first decade the academy was staffed by European art instructors and taught exclusively Western styles of painting, which served as a validation of status and class position [3]. Portraiture representing the elites own class became the primary subject, while the generic peasant or the old neighbourhoods of Cairo came in second. Another theme that dominated cultural production during this period was the ‘pharaonic revival’. This was a convenient trope for the landowning class, who reintroduced pharaonic imagery as a symbol of authority [4]. It also served an active role in reimagining Egypt [5]. As was common in anti-colonial nationalist movements, the struggle to become ‘modern’ and fend off imperialism was allied with the project to forge a national identity. The Pharaonic revival became a potent signifier of a distinct national culture and visions of a modern nation [6]. This early emphasis on portraiture, peasant scenes and the pharaonic revival began to popularise representational and figurative art, and associate such styles with being cultured and educated.

 

The expansion of the School of Art allowed for the inclusion of a new generation of artists, who although still privileged, came from a greater diversity of backgrounds. Opposition soon arose and exposed divisions within the ruling class. One particular group that would rebel against the prevailing cultural ideology of the ruling class was the Art and Liberty Group [7]. Co-founded by Ramses Younan and George Henein in 1939, Art and Liberty was an alliance of anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, and broadly left-wing artists and writers. During the years of 1940 to 1945 they held annual ‘Independent Art Expositions’, published books and pamphlets, and organised radical educational and political events. While historians disagree on the extent to which the group were responding to the rise of fascism in Europe versus the conservative elitism in the arts in Egypt, their main objective was to liberate art from immediate political servitude and support the freedom of artistic imagination [8]. In their founding manifesto Long Live Degenerate Art! they assert that creativity cannot exist when it is forced to serve the coercive, politically motivated “artificial limitations stipulated by party ideologues and other state watchdogs of moral decency”[9]. Consequently, surrealism and figurative art, the content of which is clearly derived from a physical source or object and so fundamentally representational, became the principle style to challenge the policing of free creativity everywhere, and promote a counter philosophy of art that supported unencumbered artistic expression and the power of the unconscious. However, despite the groups strong affliction with surrealism, most contributors never identified fully as surrealist and as a whole the group deployed a range of artistic techniques including expressionism, cubism and abstraction [10].

 

To find out more about the Art and Liberty group and their connection to abstract art, I went to visit Al Masar Gallery in Zamalek. It was there that the Founder & Managing Director, Waleed Abdulkhalek, brought to my attention the hints of abstraction that had surfaced in the early paintings of various members of the group. Looking through his collection, it was clear that the artistic techniques and ideas that the group developed over the years played a fundamental role in the evolution of abstract art in Egypt. What we find is that Art and Liberty’s emphasis on ambiguity, unleashing the unconscious, and alternate modes of representation - ideas that were initially represented by surrealist techniques - eventually translated into the abstract paintings of some of the members. This is particularly true regarding the practice of Foued Kamel (1919-1973). Kamel was a prominent member of Art and Liberty, who after the group disbanded eventually moved into complete abstraction. Although during the 1940’s his abstract practice was not fully evolved, it is also quite apparent it was a developing interest. This is very clearly illustrated in the poster artwork for the exhibition, “Vers L’inconu” (Towards The Unknown). Kamel designed the poster, which is now part of the private collection of Sherwet Shafei, for one of the later Art and Liberty exhibitions. While the collector states that the poster is dated around 1940, it is more likely that this is the poster is for one of the groups last collective exhibitions in 1958, of the same name [11]. Shy in its simplicity, and subtle in its admiration of abstraction, a dry but gestural black stroke washes across the poster atop an under layer of wet black ink that drips horizontally and slows down the momentum on the page, signalling towards a new direction.

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Vers L’inconu is unlike the more established abstract paintings of Kamel, and we can classify it as a transitional piece. His later works, on the other hand, are defined by strong bursts of colour and have been categorised into different periods like the blue, red and yellow. The placement of colour narrates tensions that ultimately reach an equilibrium on the canvas. With strong contrast, his use of light and dark is equally balanced, imbuing the paintings with a transcendental feel. When discussing his later works, Foued Kamel states “the radiations emanating from the self and the imprints of the cosmic order is finally the surface of the canvas itself. It is on that surface that the traces of tension, pressure, contradiction and diffusion flow”[12]. Although considered Westernised in his style of abstract painting, it is clear from this statement that his interest in death and everlasting life that was so evident during his involvement with Art and Liberty had, in his abstract works, evolved into a visualisation of life understood as “energy and motion”[13].

 

The transition to producing total abstract art was slow. In fact, the general absence of abstract art in Egypt until the 1960s was unusual since it had been an international trend since the early 1900’s. Like Foued Kamel, Ramses Younan (1913-1966) was another member of the Art and Liberty group who eventually moved into abstract painting. Unlike Kamel, Younan’s paintings adopt a more muted palette. Younan was both and artist an intellectual who wrote fearlessly in defence of women and the poor. With reference to a hostile natural environment, his abstract paintings can be said to reflect his leftist views on tensions within society [14]. Most of his abstract works, such as Symphony (1962), see small brush strokes splinter the canvas, only to be made whole again as an array of earthy tones dissolve into each other. Gestural but contained, Younan’s abstract works allude to a fragmented Egyptian landscape. Younan’s eventual transition was in some ways predictable. In his book Aims of the Contemporary Artist Younan expressed his concerns regarding the capacity of surrealism to engage with the true subconscious. He states “The art of these surrealists is susceptible to winding into an artificial deliberate art, the elements of which are produced by the conscious mind more than the imagination of the unconscious” [15]. In this way and as early as 1938 he indicated that a less deliberate and thus perhaps more gestural art may be better suited to expressing the subconscious or capturing subliminal forces. Despite expressing early on an attraction towards abstract art, it was not until the 1960’s that Younan began working in total abstraction. It is argued that one reason for this delay is because in the 1940s and 50s this style of art was too risky to be absorbed by Egyptian culture [16]. The education provided by the School of Art, the Nahda programme and the counter-cultural Art and Liberty group, each centred artistic production around representational and figurative art. This not only meant abstract art received little attention from the competing forces for power in Egypt, but it also cemented a public taste for art rooted in more representational styles. For those artists working with abstraction, it seems the transformation to abstract art was slow because of the resistance they faced from a public familiar with specific aesthetic discourses [17].

 

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Following the overthrow of King Farouk and abolishment of the constitutional monarchy, the problems hindering cultural production prior to the 1952 revolution did not disappear but rather took new form. The monopolisation of culture by the landholding elites was simply transferred to the Egyptian State. Throughout the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser the arts continued to operate along two main trajectories, that being according to the nationalist agenda of a ruling minority or a counterpart. At the same time, abstract art became increasingly appealing to the state as an art form to be exhibited abroad [18]. Since abstract art is not an accurate depiction of a visual reality, but rather alludes to senses of something, it served as the appropriate style to indicate a new modern reality. That being a non-parochial, cosmopolitan, and postcolonial culture. The problem, however, was that the state’s dictatorial influence over culture hindered cultural production. The State cast itself as a producer of culture rather than its role being to support the production of culture, which meant that the authorities set the terms by which art should be produced, and personal motivations determined what art and which artists were exhibited [19]. Inevitably, state-employed artists, particularly artists who held more senior positions in the ministry and public cultural institutions, were generously flattered, promoted, rewarded and collected. Artists and artworks rarely received attention because of merit [20]. This overtly nepotistic and state influenced art world hindered the recognition of more progressive artists, especially if they did not move within such circles. Thus, during this period abstract art was produced under the direct instruction of the State and by artists who without their social connections may otherwise have gone unrecognised [21].

 

One exception to this is Mounier Canaan (1919-1999). Removed from any ministerial nepotism, he was in some ways considered a nonentity in the establishment. Although he experienced greater difficulties as a result, he nevertheless received considerable attention for his work and even achieved international success which can be safely attributed to his originality; at this time his work was unlike anything that had be seen before. So much so that the curator and art historian Christine Roussillon devoted her masters thesis to a study of his work, in which she infers that his innovative use of materials and technique extended beyond the conventions of abstract expressionist painting. Canaan’s paintings depart from the styles of the two previously mentioned artists. His work rejects the more conventional subject matters, and instead prioritises materials and technique. His numerous abstract collections produced between 1950-1970 including, X Condition, Collage Collection and aptly named Abstract Collection, combine paper, paint, magazine cut outs and advertisements, while geometric shapes make a regular appearance [22]. These series lend themselves to formal abstraction. With great precision Canaan added layers and created absences that not only demonstrate his control over the materials, but testify to the fact that his work is dictated by the nature of the medium rather than the impulse of the gesture. Taking a slightly different direction, Arte Povera is a collection of wooden assemblages which straddle between his paintings become almost sculptural, and the extreme contrast between the materials enhances the nature and unique property of each material.

 

 

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While the 20th Century trend towards abstract art is, in addition to those mentioned in this paper, represented by artists Salah Taher, Khadiga Riad, Salah Reda, Mohsen Sharara, Abou Khalil Loutfi, Moustafa al Arnaouti, Ahmad Fouad Selim, Mohamed Taha Hussein, Mohamed Ismail and others, I decided to focus on Foued Kamel, Ramses Younan and Mounier Canaan in order to engage with broader debates surrounding abstract art between 1910 -1970 and provided a general overview of artistic production during this period. There are conceptual similarities between Foued Kamel and Ramses Younan who came from a surrealist background. Stylistically, however, Kamel’s use of colour and light lends itself to the transcendental, while Younan’s controlled brush strokes and murky colour palette gestures towards the Egyptian social and environmental landscape. Mounier Canaan, on the other hand, almost rejects the subject altogether and focuses on the material and technique itself. I hope this paper allows for further study and more meticulous research into the history of Egyptian abstract art, and prompts interest in abstract art production post 1970, particularly from the 1980’s when the movement began to flourish.

 

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[1] Patrick Kane, The Politics of Art in Modern Egypt: Aesthetics, Ideology and Nation Building (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 22.

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[2] Ibid. 26.

 

[3] Ibid. 27.

 

[4] Ibid. 35.

 

[5] Alexandra Dika Seggerman, “Mahmoud Mukhtar: The first sculptor from the land of sculpture”, World Art, 4:1, (May 2014) 27-46, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2014.893811

 

[6] See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: colonial and postcolonial histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) 2-11.

 

[7] Kane, The Politics of Art in Modern Egypt, 56.

 

[8] Donald LaCoss, “Egyptian Surrealism and Degenerate Art in 1939”, The Arab Studies Journal 8:1, (Spring 2010) emphasises Art and Liberty’s association with an international surrealist movement, and that the groups founders supported the International Federation of Independent Revolutionary Art (FIARI) instigated by Breton and Trotsky. Whereas Patrick Kane, The Politics of Art in Modern Egypt, (I.B. Tauris, 2013) believes that group is responding to the elitism and autocratic nature of Egyptian Cultural institutions and society in general.

 

[9]Ibid 87.
See Also George Henein, “Yahiyya al-fann al-munhat” [Long Live Degenerate Art], as reprinted in the journal Al-Kitaba al-Ukhrah, 3 (December 1992) 6.

 

[10] There is some debate around to what extent the group was a surrealist group. Sam Bardaouil, Surrealism in Egypt: Modernism and the Art and Liberty Group, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016) argues that the group was predominantly a surrealist group. However, Donald LaCoss, “Egyptian Surrealism and Degenerate Art in 1939”, The Arab Studies Journal 8.1, (Spring 2010), p84 provides a more balanced account of the diversity of style within the Art and Liberty Group.

 

[11] Ondrej Beránek, “The Surrealist Movement in Egypt in the 1930s and the 1940s”, Archiv Orientální 73.2, (2005), ­209.

 

[12] Quoted in Naim Atiya, al-‘Ayn al-ashiqa, (Cairo:Dar al-Nasr, 1979), 65.

 

[13] Quoted in Michel Hoog, “Autour de 1900”, Catalogue de l’exposition Occident-Orient,

l’art modern et l’art islamique (Stasbourg), 21.

 

[14] Aime Azar, La peinture modern en Egypte (Cairo: Editions Nouvelles, 1961) 47- 79.

 

[15] See Yunan's Ghayat al-Rassam al-Asri [The Aim of the Contemporary Artist], (Cairo: Jama'at Habib, 1938).

 

[16] Andrea Flores “The Myth of the False: Ramses Younan’s Post-Structuralism Avant La Lettre”. The Arab Studies Journal 8/9, no.2/1 (2000): 98 www.jstore.org/stable/27933782.

 

[17] Liliane Karnouk, Modern Egyptian Art 1910-2003, (Cairo: AUC Press, 2005) 35.

 

[18] Ibid, 107.

 

[19] Ibid, 68.

 

[20] Ibid, 68

 

[21] One could also argue that the surge in abstract art production following the 1952 revolution may have been a response to increased repression. Threaten with imprisonment and longer prison sentences, artists resorted to what were regarded as the ‘politically neutral’ styles and techniques of abstraction.

 

[22] Mounir Canaan, The Last Statement of a Revolutionary Artist, (Cairo: AL MASAR gallery, 2012), exhibition catalogue.