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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