Linked Itineraries, Reminiscence and Representation
Adam Henein - Farouk Hosny
Curated by Ehab Ellaban
March 11 - April 30, 2015
Cairo
Dubai
Riaydh
w w w. g a l l e r y w a r d . c o m
Itineraries
Introduction by Ehab Ellaban
Chief Curator, Gallery Ward
Itineraries is an exhibition that showcases two separate bodies of
works by two artists who are considered by Egyptian art historians
as “legends”. The exhibition attempts to explore the profound
worthwhile to examine in an international critical context.
The exhibition --we like here to describe it as an eventual
encounter—brings Adam Henein and Farouk Hosny together with
and for the second time after the seminal exhibition of the two
artists at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, USA in 1999.
The exhibition symbolizes two parallel itineraries, contemporary on
two levels: art content, and timing, as both had their careers start
almost at the same tome, both hot the European art scene in the
seventies and eighties of the twentieth century, and both shared
the stardom of the Egyptian art scene for over three decades.
We selected from the plethora of works from the Adam Henein
studio and from his museum works that are considered –by the
artist himself—as milestones that were important in his career
that spans almost six decades. The works we believe are also
landmarks in Egyptian modern art history.
From the studio of Farouk Hosny, we selected a series of paintings
years, some of which are quite surprising on the fronts of concept
and today he chose to surprise his audience by novelties in
performance and content.
For Gallery Ward Dubai, in our quest for quality, authenticity,
and most sustainable careers and projects to introduce to the
United Arab Emirates audiences, we bring today what we believe
metaphorically, we use the title Itineraries to illustrate our exhibition,
linking three itineraries together: Adam Henein, Farouk Hosny, and
Gallery Ward.
5
Reader
Adam Henein
1968
Bronze
101x82x42 cmh (6/8)
6
Linked Itineraries, Reminiscence and Representation:
Reminiscence
The Case of Adam Henein and Farouk Hosny
The shared itineraries of Henein and Hosny are much reminiscent of other cases that have
occurred to us in collective memory and in our assimilation of art history. Color Field painters Mark
Rothko and Clifford Still, both friends who shared studios and shared pedagogic itineraries; they,
in one adventure, they even contemplated creating their own art education curriculum in 1947
while they both taught at the San Francisco Art Institute --Known then as California School of
Fine Art.
Another example is life-long friends and contemporaries Matisse and Picasso are another
By Khaled Hafez
Linked Itineraries
As early as 1939, Clement Greenberg1 claimed that authentic avant-garde art is a product
of the Enlightenment’s revolution of critical thinking, and as such resists and recoils from the
degradation of culture in both mainstream capitalist and communist society. He, on the other
hand acknowledged that though the artist may be free in thought at all times, yet paradoxically,
the artist many times is also dependent on the market or the state. Greenberg even used the
term “they (artist and market, or artist and state) are attached by an umbilical cord of gold”2.
Such is the case of Adam Henein and Farouk Hosny: both free spirits who always chose
independence in their practice, yet paradoxically, both were also during several times an integral
part of the Egyptian art movement, the most dynamic, the oldest in terms of institutions and
cultural infrastructure, philanthropy, state sponsorship, and most authentic in the region.
Both artists’ linked itineraries started in friendship in the sixties of the twentieth century in the
ancient cities of Cairo and Alexandria, a sculptor and a painter, though both crossed practices,
either in experimentation, adventure, or in challenge. Then both had to travel to, live and work in
the same seductive city of Paris; some sage man once said that Paris is like Marguerite Monnot’s
and Alexandre Breffort’s Irma la Douce3 , seductive but impossible to own. In Paris Hosny directed
the State’s Egyptian Cultural Center in the gorgeous area of St. Michel, where both artists met
and collaborated. Then comes the Italian station, when Hosny directed the Egyptian academy
in Rome, and where both artists and long time friends already re-cross path.
When Farouk Hosny accepted to assume the responsibility of heading the cultural pyramid in
Egypt --with its long heritage of cultural overload--, as the Minister of Culture, risking his career
as a free-spirited artist, it seemed that the shared itineraries would phase out for a long period of
time, an assumption that proved to evaporate when Adam Henein accepted –with an invitation
from Hosny—to assume the responsibility of the Great Sphinx restoration after catastrophic
interventions from incompetent parties, an operation that took over eight years of shared
responsibility between the two artists, and was followed by the responsibility of creating the
Aswan Sculpture Symposium, and the revival of the stone sculpture art, a dream that loomed
in the minds of the two artists since the early years of Paris in the early seventies. Greenberg’s
golden umbilical cord best describes those two artists, free at spirit, linked to the state, and
both extremely successful with the local and regional art market, a phenomenon that is seldom
replicated, an fact that is tested and authenticated after both left their attachment to the State.
1
had been born. One conspicuous difference between them is that Matisse drew and painted
from nature, while Picasso was more inclined to work from imagination. Though Matisse and
Picasso came from the rather classical modern art history, a third reminiscence –and a much
more meaningful one-- is the collaboration and shared itineraries of Sigmar Polke and Gerhard
Richter. In 1963, Polke’s and Richter’s collaboration entailed the founding of the painting movement
“Kapitalistischer Realismus”4 (aka capitalist realism) with Gerhard Richter and Konrad Fischer. Both
artists shared the sixties of the twentieth century like Henein and Hosny, both artists were linked
to the legendary Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, both experimented with photography and painting,
though each artist was driven by a personal creative obsession, one by the observed, the other
by the felt. Such is the case of Adam Henein, who for years –with exceptions over certain periods
in his career– inspired from his seen environment, while Farouk Hosny drew inspiration from his
cognitive knowledge, manifested subconsciously.
adjacent studios for decades, shared meals, families, friends, and the same gallerists, Leo
Representation
In the exhibition he curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of art in 1964, Greenberg
seventies: post-painterly abstraction.
Greenberg had perceived that there was a new movement in painting that derived from the
abstract expressionist trend but demonstrated more openness and clarity, as opposed to the
dense painterly surfaces of that painting style, and that describes well Hosny’s early works. In
his introductory text for this seminal exhibition, Greenberg quotes the Swiss art historian Heinrich
malerisch, which simply translates as painterly, to describe
the formal qualities of Baroque art, and identify it from High Renaissance or Classical art. Painterly
of painterly
linear. The dividing
line between the painterly and the linear is easier to write about than actually see. For the past
six decades, there have been many artists whose work combines elements of both painterly
and linear acts, where painterly gests can go with linear design back and forth, which is the
very conspicuous case that perfectly describes the more recent works of Farouk Hosny, who
combines lines with colored areas, and mixes the sharp with the blurred. We can speak of Color
Field painting or Lyrical Abstraction, and even better or best, not to even try to give a name, and
associated with American Modern Art of the mid-20th century. His body of writing in promotion of the abstract
Pollock.
2
Greenberg, Clement. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” Partisan Review. 6:5 (1939) 34–49
3
Irma la Douce
Wilder. It is based on the 1956 French stage musical Irma La Douce by Marguerite Monnot and Alexandre
Breffort.
7
4
8
Sublimation
Adam Henein
1973
Bronze
64x42x15 cmh (3/8)
Adam Henein
11
13
Big Owl
Adam Henein
1963
Bronze
22x28.5x19 cmh (6/8)
12
Big Cat
Adam Henein
1973
Bronze
24x112x39 cmh (5/8)
14
Balancing Owl
Adam Henein
1961
Bronze
47x22x45 cmh (5/8)
15
The Owl
Adam Henein
1999
Bronze
45x50x50 cmh (1/4 Artist’s Proof)
16
Rooster
Adam Henein
1979
Bronze
17x40x53 cmh (6/8)
17
Donkey
Adam Henein
1964
Bronze
80x116x31 cmh (7/8)
18
The Carrier of the Can
Adam Henein
1979
Bronze
17x40x53 cmh (6/8)
19
Curiosity
Adam Henein
2006
Bronze
72x10x8 cmh (2/8)
Curiosity
Adam Henein
2006
Bronze
73x10.5x8 cmh (2/8)
20
Farouk Hosny
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2013
Acrylic on Canvas
120x100 cm
21
22
Farouk Hosny: Two Facets of an Artist’s Identity
By Carmine Siniscalco
President of A.R.GA.M. (Roman Association of Modern Art Galleries), Director Studio S-Arte Contemporanea - Rome
Translated and Edited by Sylvia and Richard Duebel
In November 2013 I had the good fortune to be asked to pen an
left his position as Egyptian Minister of Culture. I commented that
the exhibition, held in Dubai, was to be judged on its intrinsic
as a statesman.
Farouk Hosny was born and educated in Alexandria, but grew
who sets his own goals, whether in his artistic profession or in his
civil career, and keeps his eye on that objective never swerving or
altering course. A personal path that has gained him esteem over
the years both in the art world and in international political circles.
This exhibition mirrors his complex identity as an artist and an
intellectual who learned to incorporate, especially during his Italian
period, fruitful relationships and interdisciplinary collaborations
sorts. This has inevitably added to the wealth of his present artistic
expression.
Farouk Hosny is not a methodical artist but an art maker inspired
by spontaneous outbursts of mental energy transferred with an
extraordinary abitily to his works on paper or canvass. Although
France and Italy. He is a real citizen of the world with his artistic
commitments and political engagements whisking him around
the world for more than two decades, since 1987 until 2011. The
intellectual nature of the man is manifest in his ability to thrive in
politics for almost a quarter of a century- a sabatical break away
his abstract works have never rejected forms and symbols often
linked to the ancient, eternal symbols of Egyptian culture. If on
the one hand the outlines of coloured surfaces in his abstract
paintings of the last thirty years might recall mountainous and sea
landscapes or natural architectures, on the other hand his youthful,
His artistic career evolved in stages moving from being a young
student at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Alexandria
images were ahead of their time, anticipating the photographic
ever Directors of the public cultural space Anfooshy Palace in
Alexandria. From 1971 to 1978 he was Director of the Egyptian
Cultural Centre in Paris, where he turned to abstract painting.
In 1982 he became Director of the Egyptian Academy in Rome,
where his artistic identity matured, until he was recalled to Cairo
as Minister of Culture in 1987.
I have now the privilege to introduce in Dubai the twin aspects of
the work of Farouk Hosny in a solo exhibition displaying for the
Who is now Farouk Hosny ?
neo-realistic landscapes, family members and friends, before
turning to pure abstraction after a period oscillating between the
two worlds. The artist has now matured to the point where he is
compositions - hardly a surprising choice to my mind, since I
always looked upon his work as a single unity, from the initial
academic paintings to the turning point when abstraction became
his genre. I have always emphasized his remarkable independence
and liberty allowing him to draw, even during the phase of pure
abstract compositions, a series of portraits and self-portraits
Farouk Hosny is not a follower of art trends or fads: He is a man
23
brightened by a palette of colours to be found currently in his
abstract works where kaleidoscopic splashes dash one after
another with reminders of the colours of Egypt : the brown sand
and the white rocks of the desert, the intense Klein blue of the
nights, the green banks of the Nile, the cobalt Mediterranean sea,
the dazzling atmosphere of Egyptian cities and villages.
I, therefore, really appreciated the initiative of the Horizon Gallery
in Cairo and of its Director Ehab El Laban, once again in his Dubai
Gallery, to present these two seemingly incompatible aspects of
Farouk Hosny, now ready to play all his cards at the one time.
Actually, we are dealing with somebody whose unmistakable work
can not be confused with the work of any other contemporary
painter. All artists naturally have a more or less illustrious ascent
to fame. When it comes to Farouk Hosny abstract painter, many
quotations have been made for his work by art critics, from
Kandinskij to Malevic, from Action Painting to Informal Art, from
Anthoni Tapies to Miro and so many others. This is in some
measure correct, but Farouk Hosny does not imitate any of them,
they are just fellow travellers during the same historical period
impelled by same visual and intellectual stimuli during the course
of their artistic journey.
Looking now at this exhibition I can already anticipate an audience
making comparisons with Picasso, the Cubists and other artists.
nobody else. Moreover, each painting has now its own title - a
new step for an artist who used to just number his abstract
“compositions”. We are at present surrounded by ADAM and
24
EVE, THE QUEEN OF THE DESERT and THE SHADOWS OF
THE GREAT, and so on. These titles usher the audience into the
out from coloured informal surfaces: two facets of the unique
personality of Farouk Hosny. The background is, sometimes, just
informal atmosphere, as in the diptych ADAM and EVE. Sometimes
extraordinary vitality, as in THE SHADOWS OF THE WARRIOR,
or in SHE where the view is attracted by a black neck that operates
as a visual magnet in the coloured surrounding composition. In
is on the contrary to be slowly discovered: a graphite engraved in
a blank space framed by informal splashes of colour. MASKS IN
a round-trip pictorial ticket, from the reality of the Venice Carnival
depicting the transfer of two faces in a single image, a symbol of
I answer, quoting the subtitle of the painting, MASKED SELFPORTRAIT, almost a photocopy of the identity card of the artist.
We are not looking, however, at a new or different Farouk Hosny,
a Janus of painting, since these works – as his works in the past
and mindset, his rational and emotional elements, his belief in
the value of painting beyond fashionable tendencies, academic
schools and vanguard systems, his search for coherence and
intellectual honesty, his promptness in accepting new intellectual
challenges and confronting them as one faithful to tradition yet
open to innovation. Farouk Hosny is an outstanding representative
of the cultural heritage of Egypt and an unquestioned protagonist
in the contemporary art panorama of his country. Let us thank
him once more.
Meditator in a Frame
Farouk Hosny
2013
Acrylic on Canvas
100x80 cm
25
26
Self
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
60x50 cm
27
He
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
60x50 cm
28
Facing the Desert
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
100x80 cm
29
The Hero
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
100x80 cm
30
Abdel Wahab
Farouk Hosny
2015
Acrylic on Canvas
150x200 cm
Couple
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
80x100 cm
31
Dream
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
115x195 cm
32
She
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
100x130 cm
33
Woman with Umbrella
Farouk Hosny
2015
Acrylic on Canvas
100x130 cm
34
Beethoven and Hegel
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
80x100 cm
35
36
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2013W
Acrylic on Canvas
180x120 cm
37
Shadow of the Worrier
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
120x150 cm
38
The Nile
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
100x130 cm
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2013
Acrylic on Canvas
100x100 cm
39
40
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2013
Acrylic on Canvas
150x100 cm
41
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2013
Acrylic on Canvas
150x100 cm
42
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2013
Acrylic on Canvas
100x80 cm
43
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2013
Acrylic on Canvas
100x80 cm
44
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
80x100 cm
45
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2013
Acrylic on Canvas
80x100 cm
46
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2013
Acrylic on Canvas
100x100 cm
47
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2013
Acrylic on Canvas
120x100 cm
48
Untitled
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
100x120 cm
49
Bicycle
Farouk Hosny
2014
Acrylic on Canvas
120x180 cm
50
Adam Henein
Adam Henein (b. 1929, Cairo) is internationally renowned as one
astute talent as a distinctly modern artist—through his use of
solid, simple forms and the clean lines of his sculptures. Prominent
themes in his work include prayer and enlightenment, motherhood,
the bird, ascension, as displayed in his obelisks, and crossing,
which is one of the more prevalent themes in his work, expressed
through his renderings of ships, boats and ferries. He works in a
variety of media including bronze, wood, clay and granite. He is
also a painter.
Henein has held numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions,
1988; Egyptian Cultural Center, Paris, 1987; Sultan Gallery,
Kuwait, 1983; and the Egyptian Academy, Rome, 1980. He has
participated in group shows held in Paris, Naples, Rome, Venice,
Alexandria and Cairo.
during a class trip to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He went on to
study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cairo, receiving his diploma
in 1953. After graduating, he travelled Luxor and Aswan, where
take part in an exhibition of contemporary Egyptian art at the
Galliera Museum. Unexpectedly, he ended up residing in the
this period, he also travelled to Italy, particularly to Petrasanta,
where he befriended the caster Mariani. Yet despite his extended
sojourn in Europe, Henein never ceased to draw inspiration from
his own heritage.
When Henein returned to Egypt, his reputation as an artist of
international recognition and prominence was already established.
As a result, Farouk Hosny, Egyptian Minister of Culture, requested
that Henein administer the restoration of the Great Sphinx at Giza.
He also founded and is the curator of the International Sculpture
Symposium, which provides sculptors, from all over the world,
with the opportunity to carve the pink or grey granite found in
traditions of Phaoronic Egypt and Arab culture, modernity is central
my work… Artistic time has its own measure, and what I am
producing now looks a lot like what I was producing then [in the
1950s]. It is an itinerary pursued along a single road, which I took
right from the outset, and from which I have never strayed.
Ultimately, Henein is not only representative of the modern arts of
the Arab world but the international art world as a whole.
51
52
Farouk Hosny
Farouk Hosny was born in the Mediterranean town of
Hosny graduated from the Alexandria Academy of arts in
Anfoushy Cultural Center in Alexandria and later moved to
Paris as Cultural Attache in charge of the Egyptian Cultural
Center in Paris. Hosny was honored at an early age to assume
the prestigious position of handling the Egyptian Academy of
Arts in Rome. Upon his great success in the Rome Academy,
he was chosen as the Minister of Culture of Egypt until 2011.
Farouk Hosny is well-known for his unique abstract style in
art. His works were exhibited in the most important museums,
exhibitions and art centers in the world where he was
introduced by the most important critics including Jessica
Winegar, Dan Cameron, Philippe de Montebello of the USA,
Italy.
His works have been exhibited in several international
museums including the Metropolitan Museum, Huston
Museum of Fine Arts, Fort Lauderdale in Miami, the National
Museum in Vienna, le Vittoriano Museum in Rome, Carrousel
du Louvre in Paris, Tokyo Art Museum in addition to several
Arab and Egyptian Museums.
Composed with exquisite balance, enigmatic imagery and
the modern world through the use of abstraction. Hosny
has transformed the eternal signs of his native country into
restless, calligraphic gestures using vivid colors evocative of
the Egyptian landscapes: the blacks of sudden nightfall, the
blues of the sea water, the whites of limestone, the violets of
the Sinai mountain range, the burning ochres of the desert,
53
54
Gallery Ward
Originating in Cairo, Gallery Ward was founded in 2010 by two
partners; Abdulaziz Al Abdulkader and Yaser Askar with the
creative direction by established Egyptian curator Ehab Ellaban.
director of Ofok, a prominent exhibition space at the Mahmoud
Khalil Museum in Cairo and the curator of landmark projects such
as the Institute du Monde Arabe, 25 Years of Arab Creativity,
Ellaban has had his hand on the pulse of the Egyptian art scene
for the past decade.
Gallery Ward is committed to introduce, showcase and promote
multifaceted and compelling artistic productions from the Middle
East both regionally and internationally while ensuring a supportive
environment and platform from which works of art from the region,
global arena.
geographical limitations and political boundaries, art from the
region is poised to become a key player in the discourse that
activates global art production today. With this premise in mind,
Gallery Ward aims to play a central role in being a driving force
behind the growth and enrichment of art from the Middle East
region at large. Furthermore, with the belief that Egyptian art has
historically, and in the present day, been an essential agent and
plays a galvanizing role in art and culture from the region, Gallery
Ward aims to provide a focus on the contemporary Egyptian art
scene by introducing and showcasing works by some of the
most dynamic Egyptian artists living and working in Egypt and
abroad today. Thereby facilitating a more complex and compelling
dialogue surrounding Middle Eastern art in general.
w w w. g a l l e r y w a r d . c o m
55
Cairo
Dubai
Riaydh