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Art Pros spotlight Elhamy Naguib
Article by Shauna Leishman
His inspirations come from the faces and disappearing customs of Egypt as well as Egypt’s architectural heritage.
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graphic
artist but he could just as well be described as a people’s artist.
His main concern is to get the beauty and appreciation of good art
across to as wide an audience as he can reach. He consider it to be
a ”very serious responsibility of the artist to be a recorder of his
or her time”. Elhamy was born and has live in Cairo all his life. He
graduated from the College of Fine Arts of Cairo in 1967 and
undertook post-graduate studies in Islamic art and architecture at
the American university in Cairo. His work has been shown in many
exhibitions, including four one man shows, and his designs and
paintings have been sold worldwide. He is in love with his Egyptian
heritage and would like to pass that love and pride on to his fellow
countrymen. His aims are to enlighten and to educate or at least
elevate the taste of as many Egyptian as he can.
Elhamy
sees a large demand for art in Egypt but, unhappily he says, “An
awareness of quality and good taste is greatly missing. While there
is a lot of good art being produced in Egypt now, there is a lack of
good publicity for artists, and their work is usually too expensive
for most people to afford. “Elhamy would like to somehow bridge the
gap between the expensive art and the common people who he feels,
deserve to be surrounded by beautiful work. At one time he
approached a number of artists to try and convince them of the
feasibility of creating mass produced prints of their work. His
theory was that a hundred prints at a low price will reach a lot
more people and, he states, “Will also provide sales for the artist
who might have a beautiful LE 1500 painting that isn’t selling. “
Basically says Elhamy, “It’s a win-win situation. ‘ This of course
is a concept that is very big in western societies; malls and
museums are loaded with print and poster shops filled with copies of
masterpieces and other types of art. The problem for artists is that
their minds are generally so focused on their creative work that
cannot easily operate on the business aspect. This is a struggle
Elhamy describes as “switching back and forth between the left and
right brain in order to be an artist and run a business at the same
time. In Egypt the artists are, in general, waiting for a publisher
to come and do all of this for them, and yet no publisher will
appear on the scene until the process has already started and is
seen to be a viable idea. “He believes it is up to the artists to
get the ball rolling; ”And so for it hasn’t rolled much. “ Although
he has been able to convince a few artists to do prints of their
works, the problem of marketing still exists. For many artists,
their highest achievement would be to have their work placed in a
museum. Elhamy’s goals are a little different,
he
would like his work to be in people’s homes. He keeps a mass
audience in mind when working. He explains that, for this reason,
his work has to be” More intimate, uplifting and appealing than some
of the more idealistic works that would only fit in a museum’. Most
do not know how representative of a mass audience they are. Many
have been drawn to Elhamy’s work for it reflects a certain joie de
vivre and feeling that it compels one to have something of his
handing around to lighten up the environment. Some would argue,
perhaps justifiably, that the integrity of art and compromised in
order to appeal to the masses. Elhamy agrees, and adds that he does
like “to push people a bit” whenever he can. By pushing people, he
means that he likes to convince the observer indirectly to push past
normal, conventional imagery. He demonstrates this by pointing out a
piece in his gallery. The painting is of a green hued woman dancing
through the air above an Islamic style building. Her feet and hands
are cut off by the borders of the picture. Elhamy explained that
this painting was going to be one of a set of four pictures
depicting the four seasons, to be used on a calendar. In this
particular painting he let his self will as