Mamdouh Ammar - A world of magic and war

MAMDOUH AMMAR

A WORLD OF MAGIC AND WAR 1

MAMDOUH AMMAR (1928-2012) A WORLD OF MAGIC AND WAR WRITTEN BY FATENN MOSTAFA

A WORLD OF MAGIC AND WAR WRITTEN BY FATENN MOSTAFA

In an interview a week before the 2011 popular uprising on 18 January, Mamdouh Ammar summed up his take on life, answering: ‘I am a slave to freedom’ 1 . Fifteen months later and after having witnessed the massive protests calling for freedom and social justice, Ammar passed away at the age of 84 in April 2012, in his house in Mansouriya - his lifelong partner and wife Ekram by his side.

Mamdouh Ammar’s journey is one of the most proliferous in the recent history of Egyptian art.

With a career extending over a period of six decades, the multi-faceted artist spent the first half of his journey close to the people and in the streets of Egypt, and the second half, secluded, if not exiled, as a refugee in his own homeland.

Born in 1928, Mamdouh Ammar graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1952 – the year of the 23 July Revolution and during a time when the Contemporary Art Group were in the midst of creating a spectacular Egyptian Folk Realism movement. The revolutionary phase, during which art and politics blurred, left a dual impact on Ammar’s oeuvre as he first began to narrate the story of a society immersed in popular culture, deeply rooted rituals and plebeian folklore in search for alternative answers. The ascent of Egypt as the Pan-Arab leader and the ensuing (armed) conflicts in the region represented the second and equally influential factor affecting Ammar, both as an artist and an individual. From then onward, Ammar devoted himself to work against wars and ultimately concluded his career in seclusion seeking the essence of humanity.

Figure 2 Mamdouh and Ekram by Mamdouh Ammar, 1977, ink on paper

Figure 1 Mamdouh Ammar in his studio

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Mamdouh Ammar, I am a slave to freedom, El Kahira weekly, Issue # 556, 18 January 2011

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EL BEDAYA THE BEGINNING

Ammar was born in the Lower province of Beheira in 1928. At the age of 17 in 1945, the aspiring teenager took advantage of their house vicinity with a master painter to fulfill his wish to learn drawing and painting. The studio of Turkish watercolor master Hidayet (ca.1895-1965), who had settled in Cairo following the eruption of WW1 in 1914, was located a few hundred meters away from Ammar’s family home, inciting

Ammar to knock at the master’s door. For two years between 1945-1947, Ammar attended weekly lessons with Hidayet and learnt the secrets of watercolor techniques, focusing on depicting reality as it was.

After earning his high school degree, Ammar joined the Royal School of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1948.

Figure 4 Mamdouh Ammar, Atelier at the Royal School of Fine Arts School, 1951, charcoal on paper,

Figure 3 Mamdouh Ammar, Untitled, mid-1940s, watercolor, under tutorship of Turkish-Egyptian watercolor master Hedayat (1895 - 1965)

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Figure 5 a and b, Mamdouh Ammar, The Studio at the Royal School of Fine Arts, 1951 and 1952, pencil on paper

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Figure 6 Mamdouh Ammar (seated second from right) during a student exhibition at the villa of Feminist Huda Shaarawy adjacent to the Museum of Fine Arts - 15 February 1951

During his four-year enrolment, he was privileged to study painting at the hands of first generation pioneer painters such as Youssef Kamel (18911971), Ahmed Sabri (1889-1955), Hussein Bicar (1913-2002) and the French Orientalist Pierre Beppi-Martin (1869-1954) who was a great lover of Egypt and chose Cairo as his permanent residence until he died.

Figure 7 Mamdouh Ammar and a group of young students in a discussion with feminist and author Ceza Nabarawi and feminist and artist Injy Efflatoun in 1951

Keen on advancing his academic skills, Ammar pursued opportunities for government scholarships. At first, he applied for a local scholarship to travel anywhere within Egypt and to be closer to its ancient glorious monuments. Together with now world-renowned sculptor Adam Henein (1929), Ammar was selected to go on a 2-year scholarship to the Luxor Marssam or Atelier.

Founded by first generation artist and patron Mohamed Nagi to open the eyes of future artists to their own culture, el Marssam (literary the studio) was located in the premises that once was the house of Shaykh Aly Abdel Rassoul 2 in al-Gourna villa, at the West Bank of Luxor.

Figure 8 Mamdouh Ammar, Luxor Marssam (Atelier), 1952, pencil on paper, 18 x 27 cm

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2

Rawi Magazine, History of Modern Egyptian Art, 1900-1970, September 2016

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Figure 9 Mamdouh Ammar, Bathers, chinese ink, 1948, watercolor

Figure 10 Work on paper by Mamdouh Ammar depicting models waiting in front of the Luxor Atelier in 1954

Figure 11 – Mamdouh Ammar with a girl from Luxor, during his scholarship 1952 -1954

Under the supervision of artists Sayed Abdel Rassoul (1917-1995) and Salah Taher (19112007) and at the expense of the Egyptian government, Ammar and Henein lived and studied surrounded by Egypt’s ancient past from 1952 until 1954.

During his stay, he came to realize the glory of his nation’s past and got close to the people of Upper Egypt – particularly its women and their beauty.

Figure 12 Mamdouh Ammar in Luxor in 1954 standing next to a painting inspired by the women of al-Gourna

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In one of his final interviews, Ammar recounted that leaving Luxor was difficult. During the last day of their scholarship, Ammar recalled how desperate both artists were to remain longer; they tried – to no avail – to extend their stay. In retrospect, Ammar had found himself face to face with the authentic old 3.

Upon his return to Cairo and as was the norm at the time; Ammar joined the teaching staff of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo, which by then had changed its name from Royal School to Faculty.

The decade from 1957 to 1966 saw Mamdouh Ammar travel to China, France and Italy on various state scholarship grants. In 1957, he went to Peking to learn the art of woodcut.

In 1960, he joined the studio of Frenchman Andre Lhote (1885-1962), who by then was too senile to teach, forcing Ammar to settle with another French artist by the name of Augame who specialized in the art of murals.

Figure 13a, b, c - Mamdouh Ammar, Women of al-Gourna, 1955, ink and pencil on paper

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Figure 14 Mamdouh Ammar, Girl from al-Gourna, 1954, ink and watercolor on paper

Figure 15 Mamdouh Ammar, Four Girls from Gourna, 1954

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El Khalig el Thekafi, 24 August 1992, Issue # 4854

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Figure 17 Atelier du Caire held an exhibition of the works by Mamdouh Ammar and Adam Henein in 1956, following the end of their residence at the Atelier de Luxor

Finally, Ammar’s last grant was at the Egyptian Academy of Arts in Rome, which at the time, provided residence programs and promoted academic look to art

Figure 19 a, b, c, Mamdouh Ammar, Opera Peking series, 1958, pastel on paper, 16 x 25 cm

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Figure 18 Mamdouh Ammar, Portrait of renowned author Louis Awad (1915-1990), pencil on paper, 1953

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Figure 20 Mamdouh Ammar at the Atelier Supérieur de l’Art Mural of Professor Augame in Paris in 1962

Figure 21 Mamdouh Ammar standing in front of one his Mosaic Murals at the Atelier Supérieur de l’Art Mural, in Paris in 1962

The two-year apprenticeship in the studio of Turkish watercolor master Hidayet; the close teacher-student relationship with Beppi-Martin and Egyptian popular portraitist Hussein Bicar compounded with a prolonged exposure abroad enabled Ammar to build a multi-faceted narrative in which expressionism, symbolism and surrealism blend. He returned and settled in Egypt in 1966. A year later, Ammar witnessed the 1967 War – the psychological impact of which never healed.

Figure 22 Mamdouh Ammar - One of his studios in the 1960s

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THE MAGIC OF LIFE

Mamdouh Ammar grew up in the village. The affinity he had with his roots, the people and the surrounding that constructs rural life, was a constant instigator in his work to the extent that close to the end of his life, he admitted: ‘Even though I left the village in my early 20s, I have nevertheless carried all along inside of me the footprints the village left in the deepest of my soul. And this may in fact explain the feeling of exile, loneliness and silence that embodies most of my works’ 4.

Figure 23 & 24 Mamdouh Ammar, Studies Zikr, 1950

Figure 25 Mamdouh Ammar, El Zikr / Remembrance of God, 1952, oil on canvas, 135 x 235 cm,

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Mohamed Hamza, Mamdouh Ammar and the right to life, El Qahira, 8 March 2005, Issue #256

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Figure 26 a and b, Mamdouh Ammar, Portrait of Frenchman Pierre Beppi-Martin (1875-1964), pencil on paper

‘He taught me the authenticity of Cairo and its old neighborhoods. And its aesthetic worth, even when there was ugliness in the surrounding or the architecture. This Orientalist man taught me nostalgia towards our past. He taught me never to forget that I am from/ belong here; I belong to this green color in particular, to this particular peasant home, to this Islamic ornament produced that way. My ‘ostaz’ taught me the proportion of figures compared to the void’.

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Growing up surrounded by the fellahin (peasants) also entailed observing their habits and daily life – which for the most part included popular multi-layered rituals and folklore practices – some inherited from ancient times, others from Coptic or Islamic Egypt or simply traditional.

Figure 27 Mamdouh Ammar, Man with waterjar, 1954 colored pen on paper, Arab Museum

Figure 28 Mamdouh Ammar, Prayer Beads, 1952

When he moved to Cairo, he discovered that those same rituals were practiced in urban life as well. More importantly perhaps, Ammar understood the drive or the motivation behind such rituals, when a large segment of the population believed in alternative ways to get closer to the divine and to hope for a better life.

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Figure 30 a, b, c Mamdouh Ammar, Farah in Pink Dress, 1952, 47x60cm, oil on canvas; Fatma bel Kamiss el Ahmar (Fatma in Red Nightgown), 1951, work on paper, 32 x 21 cm; Ekram on a chair, 1961, 45 x 75 cm, oil on canvas.

In that sense, it is no surprise that Ammar spent a decade; from the time he was still a student at the faculty until the early 1960s, exploring the world of Magic and recognizing the important role women played in Egyptian popular life throughout.

Figure 29 Mamdouh Ammar, Mamlaket el Set / The Kingdom of Womanhood, 1952, oil on canvas, 80 x 120cm

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Figure 31 Mamdouh Ammar, el Mamlaka – The Kingdom, graduation project, 1952 Figure 32 Mamdouh Ammar, el Mamlaka – The Kingdom, preparatory drawings, 1952

His graduation project – for which he was rewarded the Highest Honors - concentrated on the subject and he researched how and why traditional Egyptians were in need of spiritual healing and to express their bond with the sacred.

Rituals such as the different Moulids, celebrations of holy Muslim saints, el Zikr, a common ritual to remember God and other popular practices preoccupied Ammar during and after his studies.

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During the years leading up to the 23 July 1952 revolution, a social malaise prevailed, caused by severe social inequalities between the minute Westernized Egyptian aristocracy and the afflicted large peasantry, a tiring spiral-like struggle for independence from the British and a growing sense of confinement or servitude.

The malaise was largely reflected in the works by the members of the Contemporary Art Group, mentored by pioneering educator Hussein Youssef Amin. Abdel Hady el Gazzar, Hamed Nada, Samir Rafi, Ibrahim Massouda and Maher Ra’ef repeatedly depicted the sufferings of the under-privileged mass and became the spokespersons of an entire nation.

Figure 33 a, b and c, Mamdouh Ammar, Waiting for El Moulid, 1951-1952, colored pens, watercolor and ink on paper

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Figure 34 a and b, Mamdouh Ammar, el Zikr, 1951, charcoal on paper

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Figure 35 El Naehat / Mourning Women, 1952-1998, 23 x 60 cm, mixed media on carton, preparatory work for large work, collection of Museum of Danshwai, Egypt

Figure 36 Mamdouh Ammar with Hamed Nada – together they reinvented Egyptian Magic

In their attempt to seek liberation, Egyptian traditional reality was dominated by spiritual acts. Ammar painted and immortalized the act of Zikr or the Remembrance of God (1952); a ritual ceremony practiced in both rural and urban Egypt and believed to help remove any evil. A common practice at the time and still existing in Egypt, this collective form of devotion is associated chiefly with Sufism, in which the worshipper is absorbed in the rhythmic repetition of the name of God and his attributes. The Dervishes was another ex-

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tensive subject for Ammar, who depicted them whirling and performing their mystical journey. The name Darwish, from Persian and Turkish origins and meaning ‘beggar’ or ‘one who goes from door to door and congregates around a mosque’, refers to a Sufi aspirant or a follower of a Sufi Muslim religious order.

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Figure 37 a and b, Mamdouh Ammar, Darwish and el Rizk (1951) and Darbet el Daf (1952 – 18 x 24 cm), charcoal on paper

Figure 40 Mamdouh Ammar, Magazib el Sayyeda, 1952, oil on canvas, 80 x 60cm

Magazib (literally meaning mentally handicapped people), are seen in religious festivities and el-Moulid, a popular tradition marking the birth anniversary of spiritual scholars and religious leaders, are recurrent themes as well. In the process, Ammar brought to light Sufism and the liberating path of spiritual attainment that promises a unique and intimate union, if not annihilation, in the Supreme Being.

Figure 38 a and b, Mamdouh Ammar, el Moulid and the Singer, 1951

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Figure 41 Mamdouh Ammar, Ferket el Madahin, 1952, 20 x 27 cm

Figure 41 a Mamdouh Ammar, Om Yehia, 1951, 18 x 27 cm

Figure 41 b Mamdouh Ammar, Zikr celebration, 1952, ink on paper, 20 x 25 cm

Figure 40 Mamdouh Ammar, Arabian Jasmine Necklace, 1954, 60 x 45 cm, oil on wood

Paintings such as Tassabih / Prayer Beads / Madad ya Hussein / El Madahin / Om Yehia are visual commentaries that exemplify the united emotional chants of faith that were and widespread in popular areas during the 1950s for the sake of peace and the hope for a better life and where the protagonists meditated in fear or hope of what is yet to come.

Figure 42 Mamdouh Ammar, Qahwa bil Hussein, 18 x 24 cm, 1952

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THE WAR FOR LIFE

Little did the Egyptian people know that they would soon witness several wars (some cold, others armed), as well as conflicts in ideologies and class struggles.

By the time he enrolled at the faculty in 1948, Egypt had stood its grounds and participated in an armed conflict during the Arab-Israeli War, only to repeat it again during the Suez Canal crisis or Tripartite aggression in 1956.

In-between, Egyptians had witnessed the overthrow of the constitutional Monarchy and the establishment of a republic under military rule, following the 23 July coup d’état led by a handful of young army officers headed by 34-year old Gamal Abdel Nasser. These successive events seem to have had profound influences on Ammar who, a few years later, would produce one of his most important works – The War. Figure 43 Mamdouh Ammar, popular folk still prevails as Ammar investigates The Crying Woman, 1960, ink on paper, 24 x 34 cm

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Mamdouh Ammar, The War, preparatory work, 1958, mixed media on paper, 35 x 32 cm

Figure 45 Mamdouh Ammar, The War, preparatory work, 1958, mixed media on paper, 9 x 21 cm

A testimony to history (and our failure to learn from it), The War is a unique account of the human agony deriving from all sorts of conflicts. Painted in 1960 following a succession of consequential conflicts (1948 Palestine war, 1952 Cairo Fire and Military Coup, 1956 Tripartite aggression and the nationalization of the Suez Canal), Ammar reflected on the atrocities of (armed) conflicts by visualizing aggression, pain, fear and death in a deserted or crumbling city.

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Figure 46, 1-6, Mamdouh Ammar, preparatory works on paper for The War produced between 1957 and 1960

In line with his practice of research when contemplating a large-scale work, Mamdouh Ammar investigated and sketched the theme of war during three consecutive years starting 1957, producing hundreds of works on paper before completing his large-scale masterpiece in 1960. As he scrutinized and dissected the physical and psychological impact, Ammar explored movement, colors and void.

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Figure 47 a Mamdouh Ammar, close up of The War, 1960

Ultimately, the monumental painting depicts the height of rejection of war as a solution and demonstrates how Ammar resisted the ideas and struggled against the practices of his times to save Egypt from its impending decline and rising social injustices. What appears in the surreal painting is a standing crowd of naked men, women and children surrounding a group of individuals lying on the floor, to symbolize defeat of the two involved parties. Clearly, there appears to be no winner, as the dozen randomly dispersed figures in the center of the painting are equally immobile, having degraded into mere corpses. Defeat is unmistakable at the heart.

Figure 47 Mamdouh Ammar, The War, 1960, 170 x 200 cm, oil on canvas

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Figure 48 Mamdouh Ammar, Wounded Horse II, 1960, mixed media on carton, 31 x 41cm

With the exception of one figure and in stark contrast with the standing crowd, the defeated are painted green – a color that has regularly been used to depict the devil, the sorcerer or the mad as shown in the seminal painting The Green Man or The Green Fool by Abdel Hady el-Gazzar. Ammar uses a second element to create a rupture between the crowd and those defeated on the ground. Congested and cramped together forming almost a full circle, the

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standing protagonists represent the masses – who seem to have (had) no say in the conflict beside observing and bearing the consequences, striving for survival, and in the process suffering and dying from the devastating destruction caused by a few. The psychological defeat painfully transcends, as the unknown befalls on man unexpectedly and is further symbolized in the screams of the wounded horse – a dramatic and painful reference to the status symbol the rare animal represented in ancient Egypt.

Mamdouh Ammar, Wounded Horse, 1959, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm

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Dominated by dark red colors, thick black lines highlight the stretched limbs, crying for salvation, appearing in all directions and in continuous motion, while the trees, with bare branches, are distant. In one instance, a woman, seemingly panting, carries a child.

In another, a man seems to attend to his family, as a shield against their inevitable doomed fate. Naked, his protagonists belong to no specific country or race, as we come to accept the perpetuity of human conflicts, from which no lesson is learnt.

Figure 50 Mamdouh Ammar, Man and woman carrying a child, 1960, Chinese ink, 9 x 12 cm

Just as they could represent the Mourning Martyrs of the atrocious 1906 Denshway (also written Denshawai) incident, who Ammar also honored in a separate series, they could well be the fallen victims of the 2011 Arab Spring and the ongoing war in Syria. They could well be representing the massacres of Sabra and Shatila; Gaza and Jenin; or Mossul. Or they could be the children of the Port Saïd town, which endured tragic losses during the 1956 Suez Canal war or the young soccer fans, who perished in the football stadium in the same city in 2012.

The War must also be taken symbolically in that it tackles conflict in the broadest sense: whether between man and the establishment, man and poverty / ignorance or the inner war of identity and beliefs.

At the time when he started exploring the theme of war in 1957, Egypt was witnessing radical socio-ideological changes at all levels. Nasser had become the ‘charismatic’ leader of the new republic, and he was keen on advancing the nation towards an independent and powerful centrally planned nation. His revolutionary government adopted a staunchly nationalist, anti-imperialist agenda, which came to be expressed chiefly through Arab nationalism. And yet, one could read through The War that, despite the grand promises, Ammar had the farsightedness of what was yet to come. Severe restrictions on political opposition, proliferation of religious fundamentalism and short-lived socialist measures created a new sense of ambiguity and confusion amongst a few – Ammar included. In that sense, The War broadly depicts the social malaise of the poor and the oppressed vacillating between triumph and defeat, dignity and humiliation, social justice and inequality – again in Egypt, the Arab region and the world at large.

Figure 52, a, b, c, Mamdouh Ammar, The Children of Port Saïd series, colored pens on paper 1957

Figure 51 Mamdouh Ammar, Preparatory drawing of a fallen couple holding a child, 1958, mixed media on paper, 21 x 28 cm

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Figure 55 Mamdouh Ammar, Swings, 1959, oil on canvas, 120 x 80 cm Figure 53 Mamdouh Ammar, Preparatory Sketch The War, 1959

As we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 23 July Revolution and the 50th anniversary of the 1967 War – commonly known in the Arab world as ‘el-Nakssa’ (The Setback) and ‘one of the most devastating conflicts in Arab memory’, Ammar’s The War is in fact a universal cry for humanity.

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Figure 54 Mamdouh Ammar, Adam and Eve, 1959, oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm

The painting may well be a silent nod to his extraordinary farsightedness as he foresaw the urgency to convey the importance of a collective sense of a shared fate. It is more than half a century since Ammar painted The War and sought to improve the moral condition of humanity and yet his work still reflects particularly well the present day turmoil afflicting the Middle East and the world.

T H E R E L AT I V E C A L M I N M Y L I F E As he came to realize the incapacity of Man to learn from repeating the same mistakes and as he felt deceived, Mamdouh Ammar began his third and final stage.

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THE CIRCUS OF LIFE

As he transited from the ills of wars, he envisioned society as a big glaring popular circus, where a blatant divide is visible separating the lonely ‘heroes’ (the entertainers) from the crowd. At times, the circus, for example the renowned and highly popular Helw Circus, appears like a cage or a jail, where the audience stands watching the accused.

At others, the circus is depicted joyfully with rich colors and a vibrant crowd. Depicting trapeze artists, clowns and dancers, Ammar, in his prolific series El Cirque or The Circus, vows us with the charm and inner beauty of the lonely heroes, but the inherent message lays in the symbolic imagery of the complexities of humans.

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Figure 56 Mamdouh Ammar, Cirque el Helw, 1957

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Figure 57, a and b, Mamdouh Ammar, Cirque el Helw, 1957

Figure 58 Mamdouh Ammar, preparatory work for Loneliness / Solitude, 1957

Figure 59 Mamdouh Ammar, The Black Clown, The Circus Series, 1957, pastel and oil on paper, 21 x 32cm

Figure 59 Mamdouh Ammar, The Black Clown, The Circus Series, 1957, pastel and oil on paper, 21 x 32cm

Figure 60 Mamdouh Ammar, Solitude, 1957, oil on canvas, 90 x 120 cm

Disguised as clowns for example, the protagonists are depicted in their temporary physiological transformation and difficult journey in which they have to experience the public and make them laugh – despite their daily struggles.

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Figure 61 a and b, Mamdouh Ammar, Belly Dancers, The Circus Series, 1955-57 Figure 62 Mamdouh Ammar, Mothers working in El Cirque, 1957, works on paper

Figure 63 a and b, Mamdouh Ammar, Dancer in el Cirque, pencil on paper, 1957

Take away their make-up and underneath is the quintessential Egyptian breadwinner or the existential stance of work. These structures and symbols are probably consciously chosen by Ammar, given the popularity of circuses in Egyptian rituals and daily life, but are also similar in the universal symbolism. In a way, these situations are the sacrifices of many people. We are all both subjects and objects. Women’s predicament resonates in this series as well, where shown as professional belly dancers, women’s lives transpire as movements from one conditional role in relation to men to another.

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SURREAL SUGAR DOLLS, BIRDS AND FLOWERS

Moving forward, Ammar decided to withdraw further and ‘exile’ within his homeland, in pursuit of the essence of humanity. He retreated in isolation and away from society and people and began to explore the splendor of solitude.

Figure 64 Mamdouh Ammar, A Lost Child, pastel and oil, 1977

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Figure 65 Mamdouh Ammar, Arrousset el Mouled, 1963

During this stage, we come to realize that Ammar seems to have found the answer then to a more peaceful life in the generative power that emerges out of the company of one’s own self - in silence and away from the turbulence of a society facing yet again major changes. Starting the 1970s, Egypt was undergoing further radical changes. For example, the pro-

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Figure 66 Mamdouh Ammar, Arrousset el Mouled, 1963

liferation of an Islamist movement was encouraged, the extent of which was soon felt across all levels of the society and affected daily life. For Ammar, radical ideas lay at the root of backwardness and obscurantism and could only be explained as an act of despair and a reaction to the widening gap between the Orient and the West. In seeking to protect and salvage

their Arab / Muslim identity, those few who embraced Salafism were reaching out for what they believed was authentic. “The inability of the Third World countries to catch up with the fierce development witnessed in the advanced world, has caused a certain malaise for some – which ultimately led a few to return to Salafism. And that, naturally, does not bring anything, but backwardness and darkness.” 5 In his last show a year

before he passed away, Ammar chose to exhibit a number of works from the series Sugar Dolls inspired by the popular yet dying tradition of Arousset el-Moulid Dolls associated with the celebration of the Prophet Mohamed’s birth. Ammar offered the works, devoid of usual bright colors and ornamental patterns, as an act of clinging to tradition while at the same time rebelling against the growing Salafist ideology that considered the doll a sin.

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El Khalig el Thekafi, 24 August 1992, Issue # 4854

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The rupture, following his self-imposed retreat and the realization of human weaknesses, is evident in his paintings as we see significantly fewer protagonists.

Gone were the crowds of people gathering around spiritual ceremonies or at a café or coming together against war. In fact, Ammar went as far as portraying a society inhabited by animals (horses and birds) or by solitary protagonists living in desolate / remote places, where questions of love, human relationships and their transformations are at the heart.

Figure 67 Mamdouh Ammar, el Kobla / The Kiss, 2000, mixed media on carton

In all these new roles, the protagonists are powerful symbols, but also manage to maintain a sense of identity and inner self – no matter how subtle it may be.

Indeed, it is this very power of symbolic identity that contributes to their sense of existence. And yet, during this monologue stage, there is an almost permanent nostalgia for a lost Egypt, which for example Tawfik el-Hakim in 1927 described in a suggestive manner in his novel The Awakening of a Nation. That nostalgia is not for that part of Egypt that was feudal, since Mamdouh Ammar, like Tawfik el-Hakim, believed in the essential equality of humanity and that man’s dignity lies in his liberation from all yolks of life. The nostalgia is rather a chance to forge a new understanding of human nature and a reorientation of humanity and hope.

Figure 68 Mamdouh Ammar, Swinging, 2000, oil on canvas, 60 x 45 cm

Poet and art critic Jean Moscatelli (1905-1965), an Italian resident of Cairo, summed it up well when he observed in 1963: ‘’A subtle poetry bathes the works of Mamdouh Ammar.’

Artist and poet Ahmed Morsi (1930) went further when he wrote in the accompanying catalogue to a USA touring exhibition in 1977: ‘The works of Mamdouh Ammar are tinged with the nobility of sorrow, for in his latest phase, the artist expresses the futility and deceptiveness of life’.

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Figure 69 Mamdouh Ammar, Two fishermen and the net, 1968, ink and watercolor on paper

Figure 70 Mamdouh Ammar, First Encounter with Pain, 1975, 85 x 100 cm

Paul Richard, an American critic for The Washington Post, wrote on April 21, 1976, ‘Ammar is a surrealist. A number of his pictures have a bit of de Chirico about them’.

At times, the contradiction in scale between the figures and the scene in which they appear gives a feeling of calculated modernism and surrealism – another element that cements further the aesthetic rupture between the last and the earlier two stages. The face of a woman suddenly becomes a pot of flowers. A child rides on a wooden horse. Many figures are suddenly deformed. A green man is eaten by a gigantic fish. Holes appear in the body of the protagonists.

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Having taken part in a touring show in the USA with other Egyptian artists such as Ezz el Din Hammouda and Zeinab Abdel Hamid, Ammar exhibited his masterpiece ‘First Acquaintance with Pain’ (1975), which Richard described as a child, symbolizing humanity, on a hobby-horse, symbolizing anguish and pain, looks down at a dying bird, symbolizing defeat or death in the modern world, on the desert sands (the void that surrounds us and that is inside of us). The

dramatic isolation of the boy on the wooden horse in a deserted city or the tiny clown in the gigantic circus surrounded by a vast audience accentuate the version of ourselves – limited and constrained, powerless in a gigantic world. The idea of the grotesque – through exaggeration, hyperbolism and excessiveness in the body forms as seen in The Fishermen whose find is gold - contrasts with the noble ability of the fishermen (the breadwinners) to bring bread home.

Ammar may have used the idea of ‘romantic grotesque’ or compassionate monstrosity as an ambiguous and satirically amusing symbol. His protagonists – whether clowns, grotesque fishermen or pregnant women, traditional sugar dolls – are more than just frozen ideas. They are alive. They are humans, and their destiny lies elsewhere. They are in transition or double symbols, one breaking out of the other, but from what to what?

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CONCLUSION Rich and versatile, Mahmoud Ammar’s oeuvre has extended over a period of six decades, without ever ceding from its strength, even during the last years of his career. Ammar began by linking the post-WWII / post1952 Egyptian culture, dominated then, by Egyptian Folk Realism, and the culture of popular rituals. The exploration of Egyptian reality through myth, Sufism and popular folklore as well as the later investigation of the agony of war (physical or psychological) blend as Ammar persevered in his search for the essence of humanity. As he fluidly moved between chronicling ordinary mystical life and releasing social rage, the prolific artist aimed to conclude by giving glimpses of what words do not say and he may well be a silent nod to a collective sense of our shared fate.

A definite ‘personism’ and emotionalism mark the works of Mamdouh Ammar, where everywhere, there are elements that betray the personal feelings of the artist for that lost ‘Egyptianness’ and that longed for humanity. These qualities are so important. They allowed the freeing of the clown’s sacrifice and his humanizing aspects loose – ultimately reminding us, the viewer, that we too are part of the ‘giant comedy’.

By the end of his life, Ammar gave the germ of a new identity and interpretive framework that made no explicit distinction between seeing and believing. His renewed ‘magical realism’ is founded on a notion of confidence, a recognition of the need for imagination, the maturing and coming together as individuals, a willingness to believe, to make believe in a magical reality. For Ammar, people needed to be, so to speak, reborn for new, purely human relations. In merging the social utopian idea with the realistic, Ammar created a carnival experience, unique in its kind. Such vision allows acceptance in finding a solution to the problems he laid out regarding human relationships. His solution emphasized the bond made between people and the individuality or better yet the escape as the answer to a better life and to convey the importance of freedom.

Figure 71 Mamdouh Ammar, The Blind Man, 1972, 81 x 100 cm

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2009 Founding, ArtTalks | Egypt 2009-2011 Lectures at prominent Collectors’ homes, Cairo 2012 Long Live Free Art, Inaugural show, A Sabry, Huda Lutfi, Keizer, Moataz Nasr, Mohamed Abla, Nermine Hammam, Yasser Nabaiel

ArtTalks | Egypt is a Cairo-based art space dedicated to showcasing and promoting modern and contemporary art by Egyptian artists. Founded in 2009, the gallery offers a rigidly selected roster of emerging and established living artists and specializes in authenticated modern works of art by 20th century artists, with a particular focus on the management of four estates.

Recognized as an authority, the gallery’s interdisciplinary practice of exhibitions, lectures and publications is a unique platform for individuals and institutions committed to the acquisition of modern Egyptian art and the field of Egyptian art history. Currently, the gallery houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collection of rare books, publications, images and archive on modern Egyptian art history.

Founder Ms Fatenn Mostafa Kanafani is a lecturer and author on 20th-century Egyptian modernism. She has contributed to the first catalogue raisonné for a Middle Eastern artist, Egyptian modernist painter Mahmoud Saïd. Currently, she is working on a chapter in the monograph dedicated to Egypt’s most inventive painter Abdel Hady el Gazzar as well as the publication of her first book, Crisis of Orientation: Independence, Identity and Art in Egypt (1850-1950).

The gallery is managed by a team of five women (Cherine Chafik, Susan Rashed, Lisa Lounis and Riham Samir) as well as one man (Wael Nasr) and is located in the lively Zamalek area, where most blue-chip galleries are.

2013 Maged Mekhaiel, Egyptian I am Mohamed Sharkawy, Little Moments of Happiness Guirguis Lotfy, Heya di Masr Ya Abla Weaam el Masry, The Golden Fly Nadine Hammam, Why Riham elSadany, Fantasmagoria 2014 Sobhy Guirguis, The Self and The Other, Retrospective Hady Boraey, Beyond Borders Sabhan Adam/Hossam Dirar, Beauty and the Beast Guirguis Lotfy, Love Affair Moataz Nasr, Untitled Mamdouh el Dewihi, Beneath the Sun, Above the Sand Riham elSadany, Lust in Wonderland 2015 Hazem el Mestikawy, Juxtaposition Weaam elMasry/Yasser Nabaiel, The Forbidden Maged Mekhail, Many Rivers to Cross Hossam Dirar, Invitation au Voyage Yasser Rostom, Doves and Crows 2016 Sayed Saad el Din, Circles in the Sand Guirguis Lotfy, Nothing else matters Hady Boraey, Towards the [Un]Known Adam Henein & Bahaa, The Sweetest Haven eL Seed, Zaraeeb 2017 Mohamed Taman, Raas Baladi Ma’a Assal Eswed

MAMDOUH AMMAR

A WORLD OF MAGIC AND WAR

Text Fatenn Mostafa Graphic Concept & Realization Omar Mobarek Photographs Emad Abdel Hady Printing Concorde Press

All works belong to the estate of Mamdouh Ammar.

The Estate of Mamdouh Ammar is under the exclusive management of ArtTalks.

8 El Kamel Mohamed Street, Zamalek, Cairo, Egypt +20227363948 info@arttalks.com www.arttalks.com

www.arttalks.com