Born in 1929, Adam Henein grew up in a family of silversmiths from Asyut and lived in Bab al-Shaariyya in Cairo. In 1953, he earned a degree in sculpture from the School of Fine Arts in Cairo. After graduating, he was awarded a two-year grant to stay in Thebes at the Luxor Atelier, established in 1941 by the Alexandrian painter and diplomat Mohamed Naghi (1888-1956) to promote the study of ancient Egyptian art as part of the curriculum of art schools in Egypt. There, Henein studied pharaonic tombs and witnessed daily life in Upper Egypt. In 1972, Henein, a mid-career Egyptian sculptor, moved to Europe with his wife Afaf‘ to learn everything about art.’ After spending over 25 years in Paris, Henein returned to his country of birth.
Adam Henein has devoted his life to the art of sculpture, from which nothing has distracted him, except the practice of color drawing, in keeping with traditional Egyptian techniques. Today, he is considered the most influential living Arab sculptor of our time. A modernist artist of international note, Henein’s work is part of the founding collection of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, and his large-scale sculpture The Ship, conceived as a metaphorical alternative to the museum space, is permanently installed in the museum’s piazza.
In 1996, Adam Henein established the annual Aswan International Sculpture Symposium (AISS) in Aswan, a city that since Antiquity has been famous for its granite quarries. He was awarded the State Award for the Arts in 1998 and the Moubarak Prize in 2004. In 2014, he founded his eponymous museum in Harraniyya, housing over 4000 works.
Born in 1929, Adam Henein grew up in a family of silversmiths from Asyut and lived in Bab al-Shaariyya in Cairo. In 1953, he earned a degree in sculpture from the School of Fine Arts in Cairo. After graduating, he was awarded a two-year grant to stay in Thebes at the Luxor Atelier, established in […]
“Let me live in the world of magic I admire. I do not want to know what things are. Knowledge renders life unbearable.” Dubbed the spiritual godfather of the symbolic movement, Abdel Hadi al-Gazzar is one of the most important Egyptian modernist painters and perhaps the most inventive. He was born in 1925 in Alexandria, […]
“My artistic character developed between the Bab Al She’reya neighborhood and rural Egypt. The influences of the popular area’s noise and the quietness of the rural environment were complete opposites. This affected my artistic personality by making me unable to commit to a certain artistic style.” Multi-faceted Omar el Nagdi was born in 1931. With […]
Hussein Amin Bicar (1913 in Alexandria – November 2002 in Cairo) is one of Egypt’s most prominent artists of the 20th century. From his childhood in Alexandria, Bicar seemed destined to be an artist. He could play the lute at the age of eight, and by nine, he was in demand as a music teacher […]
Born in 1928, Hassan Soliman graduated from Cairo’s School of Fine Arts in 1951. However, even before his graduation, Soliman’s skill as a draughtsman had drawn the attention of art critics and dealers, to the extent that one dealer offered him generous patronage in return for exclusive rights over what he produced. In the Cairo […]
“I am interested in projecting human implications through an artistic vision of a community on which long-standing woes have piled. However, amidst the nightmarish climate surrounding them, there is something which we sympathize with.” Hamed Nada (1924 – 1990) A satirist of the human tragedy at first, Nada was one of the key members of […]
Born in Alexandria on 18 August 1887 to a well-to-do family, Georges Hanna Sabbagh studied at Les Jésuites school in Cairo before studying Law in Paris in 1906. While in Paris, he discovered his passion for the arts and neglected the studies his father sent him to pursue. Determined, Sabbagh took on a salesman job […]
The Alexandria-born brothers, Seif and Adham Wanly, got introduced to the world of art through the stories of their French teacher during their school years. Like other pioneer artists, their parents preferred to see their sons pursue ‘serious’ studies. In 1925, and without their parents’ knowledge, the two brothers enrolled in art classes with an […]
Born in 1948 in Cairo, where she lives and works, she studied Islamic culture and history in Montreal, gaining a Ph.D. She then took up the position of Professor of Islamic cultural history at the American University in Cairo in 1983. She now works as an artist based in the Townhouse Gallery studios and has […]
Yasser Nabaiel is an Egyptian-born, Switzerland-based visual artist.