ArtTalks is proud to announce the signing for the management of the estate of the late Egyptian pioneer artist Sobhy Guirguis with the family. This is an important milestone to preserve, document and exhibit the legacy of one of Egypt’s most influential artists of the twentieth century. A comprehensive perspective will take place at the gallery early 2014 to commemorate the first passing of Guirguis.
Having departed this world at the age of 83, Sobhy Guirguis leaves behind an unparalleled legacy of avant-gardism, modernity and humanity. His body of work rouses a certain awe by virtue of his selflessness, naivety and indefatigable commitment to artistic creation. As we enter the realm of one of the more perplexing artistic psyches of the 20th century in the Arab world, we soon realize how his art creates a profound and intimate experience. His work is at once conceptual and emotional; minimalistic and complex; mature and childlike; ancient Egyptian and universal; abstract and figurative and above all this, human.
Indifferent to, or having chosen to be so, and secluded from his surrounding environment, Sobhy Guirguis sought relentlessly for answers to grasp the unexplainable human existence. Despite witnessing the fall of the British colonization, the 1952 revolution, the wars of 1967 and 1973, the American invasion of Iraq, and more recently the 2011 Arab Spring across the Middle-East, Sobhy Guirguis remained firm and more stubborn, unmoved as one could superficially conclude, sticking to his quest for peace and existentialism.
SOBHY GUIRGUIS was born in 1929 in Cairo, Egypt and lived and worked in Cairo. He received a BFA, MFA and PhD from the Fine Arts School in Cairo, Egypt and obtained a postgraduate diploma in Florence in 1964. Born to a family of musicians, Guirguis inherited the passion of music and transformed it into visual arts. He received the prestigious first prize for Sculpture in Alexandria Biennale for Mediterranean Countries in 1994 and the Grand Prize of the Cairo International Biennale in 1995.