Abdel Al-saighir

Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar (Egyptian, 1925-1965) Looking for the Unknown (The Tower) signed 'El gazzar' (lower left), signed and dated again in Arabic(lower right) oil on celotex 31 x 19 7/8in. (78.5 x 50.5cm.) Painted in 1964 Literature Soby El-Sharouny, Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar, Cairo 2007 (illustratedin colour, p. 102) Lot Notes Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar is among the most important of all Egyptianartists and perhaps the most inventive. Although he died whenyoung, his astonishing diverse works of the 1950s and 1960s areamongst the most compelling images of twentieth century MiddleEastern art. El-Gazzar was a member of the Group of Contemporary Art, whichincluded such artists as Youssef Kamel, Ibrahim Masuda, al-Habshi,Mohammed Khalil and Ahmad Mahaer. He was among its leadingproponents of surrealism, along with his colleagues Hamed Nada andSamir Rafi'. As in the 1950s work of Nada and Rafi', there is astrong social message in El-Gazzar's earlier painting. As subjectshe would choose ordinary working-class people as well as those wholived on the edge- mystics, soothsayers and circus acrobats.Through his strong line and colour, these depictions were to givethese characters a certain nobility, but a pervasive feeling ofmagic and mystery permeates the paintings. El-Gazzar's first series of drawings in 1946 when he was onlytwenty one years old were based on the anthropological theme of manbefore civilization and his relationship with the wilderness. Thesecond period of El-Gazzar's career reflected the influence ofSayeda Zeinab where medieval traditions resisted all the winds ofmodern westernization. It was through this district that hewitnessed the moulids and the religious festivals that have beencelebrated since the Fatmid period. He began to associate theintuitive aspect of art (its soul) with the essential element inthe popular magical art (the hidden and the unknown). The subjects of El-Gazzar's later works were very different,influenced as he was by the politics of contemporary Egypt, with afocus on technology and progress. Major works of engineering on ascale not seen since the construction of the Suez Canal wereunderway in Egypt during the early 1960s. The construction of theAswan High Dam employed thousands of workers and was thenationalist project of the post-revolution era. Besides regulatingthe flow of the river, eliminating the erratic annual flood andproviding a reliable source of freshwater, it would also provideelectricity for much of the country. This was a technical feat by acountry confident in its abilities, and Egyptian artists made thetrip to Upper Egypt to view this modern miracle in progress. El-Gazzar was among these artists, visiting the dam in 1963. Whilstthere he made numerous detailed sketches of the site, especially ofthe huge machines and teams of men who swarmed about them. Thesepictures are dominated by monumental contraptions, but they recallsomething of the heroism associated with pharaonic construction,and resemble modern day re-workings of Bruegel the Elder's famousTower of Babel. The summation of these was his epic painting TheHigh Dam (1964), for which he received the Medal of Art andSciences and the National Encouragement Prize. Whilst there is no doubt that El-Gazzar's visit to the dam affectedhim profoundly (his work pre- and post-Aswan are strikinglydifferent), his attitude to what he saw remains strangelyambivalent. He appears to have been both fascinated and repelled bythe interaction between man and machine, between biology andtechnology. Influenced by what he saw at Aswan, but also by thereports of Cold War space technology brinkmanship, he moved awayfrom a surrealism influenced by the irrationalism of folkloretowards a surrealism that resembled ever more closely sciencefiction. This was really an extraordinary thing for an Egyptianartist to do -amongst his contemporaries there were no parallels.Far from mere fantasies, these works expressed social concerns butit a way that was thoroughly up to date. Over-population was agrowing problem in the Egypt of the 1960s and an impetus for theconstruction of the dam, and for El-Gazzar space was the onlypossible escape. In his so-called Space Period, El-Gazzar exploredthe possibilities of closer relationships between man and machines,drawing astronauts, cyborgs, space cities and mechanicalenvironments. Built into these depictions of an extraterrestrialfuture was a message of caution, lest the machine subsumehumanity. Although El-Gazzar made numerous small-scale drawings, oilpaintings from this period are exceedingly rare. The Present workLooking for the Unknown (The Tower) is among the most literal ofthese space age dwellings fantasies, where the figures move aroundpipes and tubes which resemble chains, dwarfing them, separatingthem and compartmentalizing them.