01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Ibrahim El Dessouki's The Seventh Day, with Footnotes, #51

Ibrahim El Dessouki, Egyptian, b. 1969

The Seventh Day

Oil and oil bars on canvas

98 2/5 × 220 9/10 in, 250 × 561 cm

Private collection

El Dessouki’s triptych of seven majestic, goddess-like women are incarnations of the Egyptian goddess of motherhood, Hathor, in her human, as opposed to bovine form. The painting derives its name from Egyptian tradition, inherited from ancient times, ‘El Sebou’ or ‘The Seventh Day’. The ritual is a seven-day celebration upon the birth of a child; the seventh day is when the child is believed to gain their hearing. The goddess appears in her seven iterations until the final day, upon which she whispers the baby’s faith. The pure-white of their garments highlights their dark features and olive skin to produce a striking image of a woman, captured candidly in the midst of various tasks, who epitomises Eastern ideals of beauty. More on this painting

Ibrahim El Dessouki (b. 1969, Cairo, Egypt) lives and works in Cairo as a painter of a highly condensed style in portraiture as well as in still life painting and landscape. His unique elaborate and highly meticulous treatment of shades & his refined textures that echo his feelings through an extraordinary & notable use of paint kneaded carefully to result in simultaneously dreamy & epic tones of color. Not to mention his immense sized shapes of women who pose at times to inspire awe and bewilderment showing off in the meantime details and mutations of degrees-of dimness, shades and light, to evoke the sense of tenderness and delicacy out of so many thick layers of rich and varied tints of paint which make the painting so vital and poetic.

Dessouki paints animals, still nature, landscape & women all in a soft, incredible & divine contemporary style. He is famous for his paintings of women; some of those paintings express his nostalgia for the women who strolled in his neighborhood when he was a child with their ample bodies hardly covered with a graceful shawl. His paintings of women are simple yet rich with grace and softness; his style is as pleasing to the eye and elegant as his subject matters.

Dessouki participated in exhibitions in Egypt and abroad. In 2003, he was part of the Panorama of 20th Century Egyptian Art in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria. In 2006 & 2008, he was an invited artist to the 10th and 11th Cairo International Biennale. More on Ibrahim El Dessouki

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, 365 Saints and 365 Days, also visit my Boards on Pinterest

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01 Painting, Middle East Artists, Ibrahim El Dessouki's Doors and False Doors 5,, with Footnotes, #50

Ibrahim El Dessouki, Egyptian, b. 1969

Doors and False Doors 5, c. 2021

Oil on canvas

72 4/5 × 47 1/5 in, 185 × 120 cm

Private collection

“False doors”, also known as “Ka doors”, as they allowed the Ka (an element of the “soul”) to pass through them, were common in the mortuary temples and tombs of ancient Egypt from around the Third Dynasty and temples of the New Kingdom. The false door was thought to be a threshold between the world of mortals and the world of deities and spirits. The deity or the deceased could interact with the world of the living either by passing through the door or receiving offerings though it. As a result it was not uncommon to find false doors depicted on the sides of coffins as well as on the cabinets of “shawabti”.

From the middle of the Fifth Dynasty, the decorations often included torus moulding (convex moulding resembling a semicircle in cross section) and a “cavetto cornice” (a concave bracket around the top of a wall or gate with a cross section that resembles a quarter circle in cross section). It is thought that these decorations represented the plants originally used to build predynastic buildings. Images of the deceased were also fairly common. Usually, the decoration was undertaken in such a manner that the deceased appeared to emerge from the false door itself. More on False doors

Ibrahim El Dessouki’s painting style is defined by his unique treatment of paint, accentuated by his ability to create subtle changes in its texture; his unusual use of negative space; and his deft manipulation of shadow and light. While the artist’s genres encompass portraiture, landscape and still life, El Dessouki’s subject matter is very much Egypt-centric, and captures his own unique and hypnotic perspective of the soul and essence of Egypt. More on this painting

Ibrahim El Dessouki (b. 1969, Cairo, Egypt) lives and works in Cairo as a painter of a highly condensed style in portraiture as well as in still life painting and landscape. His unique elaborate and highly meticulous treatment of shades & his refined textures that echo his feelings through an extraordinary & notable use of paint kneaded carefully to result in simultaneously dreamy & epic tones of color. Not to mention his immense sized shapes of women who pose at times to inspire awe and bewilderment showing off in the meantime details and mutations of degrees-of dimness, shades and light, to evoke the sense of tenderness and delicacy out of so many thick layers of rich and varied tints of paint which make the painting so vital and poetic.

Dessouki paints animals, still nature, landscape & women all in a soft, incredible & divine contemporary style. He is famous for his paintings of women; some of those paintings express his nostalgia for the women who strolled in his neighborhood when he was a child with their ample bodies hardly covered with a graceful shawl. His paintings of women are simple yet rich with grace and softness; his style is as pleasing to the eye and elegant as his subject matters.

Dessouki participated in exhibitions in Egypt and abroad. In 2003, he was part of the Panorama of 20th Century Egyptian Art in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria. In 2006 & 2008, he was an invited artist to the 10th and 11th Cairo International Biennale. More on Ibrahim El Dessouki

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, 365 Saints and 365 Days, also visit my Boards on Pinterest

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

I do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.

If you enjoyed this post, please share with friends and family.

Thank you for visiting my blog and also for liking its posts and pages.

Please note that the content of this post primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.

03 Paintings, Middle East Artists, Paul Guiragossian's Femmes en Conversation, with Footnotes, #49

Paul Guiragossian (Lebanese, 1926-1993)

Femmes en Conversation (Women in Conversation), c. 1970

Oil on canvas

28 3/8 x 39 1/8in. (72 x 99.5cm.)

Private collection

Paul Guiragossian (1926 – November 20, 1993) was an Armenian Lebanese painter. Born to Armenian parents, Paul Guiragossian experienced the consequences of exile from a very tender age. Raised in boarding schools, he grew up away from his mother who had to work to make sure her two sons got an education.

Paul Guiragossian (Lebanese, 1926-1993)

Automne (Autumn), c. 1989

Oil on canvas

53 1/8 x 55 1/8in. (135 x 140cm.)

Private collection

In the 1950s, Guiragossian started teaching art in several Armenian schools and worked as an illustrator. He later started his own business with his brother Antoine, painting cinema banners, posters and drawing illustrations for books. Soon after he was discovered for his art and introduced to his contemporaries after which he began exhibiting his works in Beirut and eventually all over the world.

Paul Guiragossian (Lebanese, 1926-1993)

L'Ete (The Summer), c. 1995

signed 'PAUL.G.' (lower centre)

Acrylic on paper

39 3/8 x 27½in. (100 x 70cm.)

Private collection

In 1956, Guiragossian won the first prize in a painting competition, which landed him a scholarship by the Italian government to study at The Academy of Fine Arts of Florence.

In 1962, Guiragossian was granted another scholarship, this time by the French Government, to study and paint in Paris at Les Atelier Des Maîtres De L'Ecole De Paris.

By the mid 1960s Guiragossian had grown to become one of the most celebrated artists in Lebanon and eventually of the Arab world and even though war broke out in the early 1970s, his attachment to Lebanon grew bigger and his works became more colorful with messages of hope for his people.

In 1989, Guiragossian went to Paris to exhibit his works in La Salle Des Pas Perdus in UNESCO and lived in the city with part of his family until 1991. In that year, he had a solo exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe. This exhibition was extended and marked the first solo show at the IMA for any artist. More on Guiragossian

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, 365 Saints and 365 Days, also visit my Boards on Pinterest

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

I do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.

If you enjoyed this post, please share with friends and family.

Thank you for visiting my blog and also for liking its posts and pages.

Please note that the content of this post primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.