Biography
During his short but prolific career, Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar rose to become one of the most important Egyptian artists of the postwar period. He began painting in a folk style, influenced by Surrealism and the traditions and motifs of Cairo's urban landscape and popular religious beliefs, but he transitioned to images of impossible machines and space travel later in his life. His education in Egypt and abroad heavily influenced his art and how it developed over two decades.
El-Gazzar was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1925 but moved to Cairo in 1936 when his father, an Islamic scholar, took a position at Al-Azhar University. The family settled in the Sayyida Zainab District, on the edge of medieval and modern Cairo. El-Gazzar thus grew up enmeshed in urban religious traditions including moulids celebrating Muslim saints, a popular and long-standing tradition that takes place across Egypt. He also saw first handthe mystical imagery and beliefs of the ‘popular’ classes. Yet, he was also a product of modern middle-class urban milieu, firmly tied to the Egyptian educational system.
El-Gazzar started his academic life in Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine, abandoning it to later join the School of Fine Arts, Cairo in 1945. There, he united with other students, including Samir Rafi (1926–2004), Hamed Nada (1924–1990), Maher Raif (1926–1999), Kamal Youssef (1923–2019), Ibrahim Massouda (1938–1965), Salem al-Habashi (1924– ?) (known as Mogli), and Mahmoud Khalil (1929–1955) to form the Jamāʿat al-Fann al-Muʿāṣar (Contemporary Art Group) under the tutelage of Hussein Youssef Amin. These young artists professed an artistic ideology to return to Egyptian identity in their work. Dubbed "Popular Mythologies" by Egyptian art critic Sobhi Sharouny, El-Gazzar's early style employs traditional and mystical religious themes in a legible figurative style that simultaneously asserts "Egyptianness" and a social temperament with attention to the poor and dispossessed. This style melded perfectly into the atmosphere of the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, which promoted pan-Arab socialist ideals. As a result, El-Gazzar exhibited at the 1952, 1956, and 1960 Venice Biennials as an official Egyptian artist and received scholarships from the government for work and study.
In 1958, El-Gazzar enrolled at the Central Restoration Institute in Rome, Italy. For three years he studied and excelled in courses in restoration, painting, art history, and science among an international group of students. During this time, he also traveled widely in Europe, visiting museums, churches, and art exhibits. Once immersed in this European artistic and scientific study, his painting shifted. Instead of the stories and images of urban Cairo, El-Gazzar created images of impossible machines, complex technologies, and outer space.
His 1962 painting, al-Mīthāq (The Charter) s, represents this shift as it includes aspects both from the earlier "mythologies" and the later images of modernization and the effects of technology. On the one hand, the work espouses a nationalist message through its representation of Nasser era accomplishments, in particular the eponymous National Charter, which laid out Egypt's new socialist policies in 1962. To symbolise the new balance between industry and agriculture, a traditional peasant and a modern worker flank a green-skinned woman wearing an amulet of the Egyptian flag. In the background, symbols of Egypt's economic and technological power appear: the Suez Canal and the Aswan High Dam. Scholars have argued, however, that El-Gazzar buried a critique underneath these nationalist symbols. Unlike widespread icon of the female peasant representing agricultural history and fertility, the Charter’s central woman’s meaning is unclear. Her green skin and headdress of bare tree branches are ominous, but the ultimate interpretation is left with the viewer.
After moving from Italy back to Egypt in 1961, El-Gazzar passed away at the age of 40 in 1966.
