Hassan Soliman

Abstract

Hassan Soliman was an influential and prolific artist and writer who helped shape Egypt’s post-independence cultural sector. Like many of his peers who graduated just before and after the Free Officers’ coup of 1952, Soliman believed in art’s centrality to the development of a new nation-state, as well as the significance of the country’s historical and folk art to this project. Unlike many of his best-known peers, however, Soliman chose to continue working within well-established art-historical genres of painting, including still life, portraiture, and city-, landscape-, and seascape painting. At the same time, his painting was widely admired for its restrained palette, depiction of light and shadow, and spare, at times almost abstract, compositions.

In the 1960s and 70s, Soliman taught at the People’s University and the Cinema Institute (Ma‘had al-Sinima) in Cairo, as well as serving as an arts editor and writer for newly founded and influential publications al-Majalla (est. 1957) and al-Katib (est 1960). Soliman, like many artists of his generation, was shocked and disillusioned by the 1967 surrender of Egyptian forces to Israel, or the Naksa (Setback) that ended the Six-Day War. The establishment of the avant-garde cultural journal Galerie 68 the following year, with Ahmed Morsi (1930–) and Hassan Soliman at its helm, served as a rejoinder to this loss of national confidence and its implications for the artist’s role in society. In 1978, President Anwar Sadat’s signing of the Camp David Accords dealt another severe blow to Egyptian national prestige and the Nasserist-era dream of Pan-Arabism. Soliman’s best-known book, titled The Artist’s Freedom, published two years later, laid out an impassioned defence of the importance of art to society and vice versa.

Biography​​

Soliman was born in the affluent Cairene Sakakini neighbourhood in 1928. His uncle, Ahmed Fakhry (1905–73), was a prominent Egyptologist and archaeologist who exposed Soliman to Egyptian art history at a young age. Biographies of the artist often mention the importance of his father’s passion for the history of Islamic art and architecture to the young artist. Soliman studied at Cairo’s School of Fine Arts (Kulliyat al-Funun al-Jamila/Ecole des Beaux Arts) with Pierre (Beppi) Martin (1869–1954), among the first cadre of artists to teach at the school, and Pioneer-generation artist Ahmed Sabry (1889–1955) before graduating from the Painting Department (Qism al-Taswir) in 1951. Subsequently, he was awarded a two-year residency at the state-administered Luxor Atelier (Marsam al-Funun al-Jamila, al-Aqsur/L’Atelier de Louksor) in Upper Egypt from 1952 to 1953.

Soliman attracted critical attention as an artist early in his career and soon rose to prominence in Egypt’s post-independence cultural sphere. His first solo exhibition was held in Cairo in 1952 under the auspices of the Union of Former Students of the School of Fine Arts. The exhibition established the recent graduate’s reputation for works that rendered well-established art-historical genres such as the still life or landscape in a highly restrained, or grisaille, palette, and for his subtle use of light and shadow to produce dramatic compositions. Soliman soon began exhibiting regularly in Egypt and was selected to participate in the Egyptian section of the second, third, and fourth Alexandria Biennales (1957–61).

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Soliman experimented with abstract styles and colourful palettes. These included entirely abstract works that responded to the interest in lyrical abstraction shared by other artists in Egypt at the time, as well as his work as a scenographer and graphic designer. However, it was a painting titled Work in the Field (‘Amal fi-l-Haql, 1962) that combined his original approach to pared-down figuration with compositional elements bordering on pure abstraction that would become a calling card of the artist and marked a development the style for which he is best known today. Indeed, the title would be adopted as the title of a 1980 documentary film dedicated to the artist and directed by the poet Dawud ‘Abd al-Sayid. Titled Work in the Field (‘Amal fi-l-Haql, 1962), the painting won an award in a state-organised exhibition dedicated to scenes of rural life in Egypt and titled Work in the Field: A Painting Competition, 1961-62. The painting features a scene of two men working in a field using a sickle and the rapidly disappearing technology of the ox-driven wooden bench and thresher, or nurij. Featuring a subject familiar to artists in Egypt at the time who had been exposed to generations of painting depicting rural life and centred around a figurative ensemble, the surrounding landscape seems to dissolve into a play of brushstrokes nuanced by subtle shifts in colour.

In this period, Soliman contributed to Egyptian cultural life in various capacities. From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, he worked as a scenographer, designing sets and costumes for performances at the National Theatre (al-Masrah al-Qawmi. In 1954, he taught drawing in public schools and at the People’s University (al-Jami‘a al-Sha‘biyya). Soliman also taught at the School of Fine Arts and the Cinema Institute (Ma‘had al-Sinima). He was also a prominent public voice for the arts. Between 1963 and 1966, Soliman worked alongside editor Yahya al-Haqqi (1905–1992) as a designer and writer for al-Majalla magazine: an influential, state-supported, but independent-minded platform for a new generation of writers and intellectuals. While there, Soliman published texts devoted to important historical works of European art, such as Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830) and Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937). He also helped expose readers to the work of his contemporaries in Egypt, featuring works by local artists such as Ahmed Morsi, Kamal Khalifa (1926–1968), Mustafa al-Razzazz (1942–), Abdel Hadi El Gazzar (1925–1966), and the Haraniyya school established by Ramses Wissa Wassef (1911–1974) on the cover of al-Majalla, alongside texts devoted to their work in the same issues.

In 1966, Soliman participated in the pavilion of the United Arab Republic at the 33rd Venice Biennale. The same year, he pursued classes in Psychology of the Fourth Dimension at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. His interest in psychology carried over into a publication titled How to Read an Image: The Psychology of Lines, published the following year. The work was the first of three by the artist to appear in the “How to Read an Image?” (Kayfa taqraʼu ṣūrah?) series published by Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi.

The year 1967 marked a significant shift in the artist’s engagement with the predominantly state-driven cultural sector. Soliman had long identified with struggles for independence in the Arab world and the pan-Arabist project championed by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. He befriended Algerian independence leader and head of the Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN) Ahmed Ben Bella (1916–2012) during the latter’s short-lived tenure in Egypt between 1952 and 1954. Following Israel’s defeat of the Egyptian army during the Six-Day War of 1967, Soliman, like many other artists of his generation, struggled to redefine art’s relationship to society and his own role as an artist. The same year, Soliman painted one of his best-known works, The Last Supper (al-‘Asha’ al-Akhir), featuring a central, Christlike figure at a table: an empty plate before him, his hands extended outwards and face upturned in a gesture of supplication. Twelve masked figures gather around, observing and commenting on the scene. The composition borrowed the longstanding European art-historical trope of Christ’s Last Supper with his apostles to convey the anguish, betrayal, and sense of helplessness felt by Soliman and his generation following the defeat.

In 1968, Soliman helped to found the influential avant-garde cultural journal Galerie 68 (1968–71) with Alexandrian artist Ahmed Morsi and served as art director (al-mushrif al-fanni) for the publication’s first two issues (June and July 1968). In an editorial note published in the journal’s inaugural issue, Galerie 68 committed itself to rebuilding the foundations of a “new democratic, socialist and free homeland [watan].” While wrestling with how to redefine the artist’s role in the Arab world following the Naksa, Soliman remained engaged in various public-facing roles. In 1968, he began working as an art director, designer and illustrator for al-Katib magazine. In 1972, the artist contributed his wide-ranging expertise in the arts to three short-form educational films dedicated to subjects including Arab Ornament (Zakharif ‘arabiyya, directed by ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Tilmisani), The Arts of Arabic Calligraphy (Funun al-khat al-‘arabi, directed by ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Tilmisani), and Horizons (Afaq, directed by Shadi ‘Abd al-Salam). Following the signing of the Camp David Accords—a final blow to the dream of pan-Arab solidarity and nationalism to which he was so committed—Soliman would revisit the theme of the artist’s role in Egyptian society in his best-known book The Artist’s Freedom (Hurriyat al-fannan, 1980).

While Soliman’s painting style remained relatively consistent throughout his career, he adopted a range of subjects including still-life scenes; scenes of historical, or Islamic Cairo and its monuments and the people living and working in these areas; rural scenes, seascapes and Nilotic scenes; and farm animals. He is also remembered today for his intimate renderings of female figures and portraits. In the 1970s, as Egyptian civil society embraced an increasingly socially conservative stance bolstered by an increasingly intolerant religious fundamentalism, Soliman became an outspoken critic of the state’s decision to ban drawing nude models from arts studios and curricula. Initially a product of the heady, hopeful era of newfound national independence and nation-building, Soliman would eventually become disillusioned with the promises offered by the Nasserist state and the potential it seemed to hold for a new generation of artists and intellectuals in its development. Nevertheless, his longstanding role as a public intellectual and advocate for artistic freedom and social engagement, along with the positive critical reception of his art, ensured the enduring influence of his views and vision.

Bibliography

Aimé Azar, La peinture moderne en Égypte. Cairo: Les Éditions Nouvelles, 1961.

Hamza, Muhammad, Samir Fu’ad and Salah Biysar. Ḥasan Sulaymān: Akhir Fursan al-Khamsiniyyat [Hassan Soliman: The Last Knight of the Fifties]. Cairo: al-Hay’a al-Misriyya al-‘Amma li’l-Kitab, 2012.

Ruwayni, ‘Abla. Nisa’ Ḥasan Sulaymān [Hassan Soliman’s Women]. Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aʻlá lil-Thaqāfah, al-Qāhirah, 2009.

Said, Hamed, ed. Contemporary Art in Egypt. No site: Ministry of Culture and National Guidance and Yugoslavia, 1964.

al-Sharuni, Subhi. Mathaf fi-Kitab: Mukhtarat min majmu‘at Duktur Muhammad Sa‘id Farsi, al-‘amal al-misriyya/Museum in a Book: The Collection of Dr. Mohamed Saiid Farsy, “The Egyptian Works.” Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1999.

Shehab, Bahia and Haytham Nawwar. A History of Arab Graphic Design. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2020.

Sulaymān, Ḥasan. Dhālika al-jānib al-ākhar: Muḥāwalah li-fahm al-mūsīqá al-bāṭinīyah fī al-shiʻr wa-al-fann [This, the Other Aspect: An Attempt to Understand Esoteric Music in Poetry and Art]. Damascus: Dār Mashriq-Maghrib, 1996.

Ḥurrīyat al-fannān [The Artist’s Freedom]. Cairo: al-Hayʼah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʻĀmmah lil-Kitāb, 1980.

Kayfa taqraʼu ṣūrah?: al-Ḥarakah fī al-fann wa-al-ḥayāt: [How to Read an Image: Movement in Art and Life]. Cairo: Dār al-Kātib al-ʻArabī lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr, al-Qāhirah,1997.

Kayfa taqraʼu ṣūrah?: Lughat al-shakl al-fannī [How to Read an Image: The Language of Artistic Form]. Cairo: al-Hayʼah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʻĀmmah lil-Kitāb, 1970.

Kayfa taqraʼu ṣūrah?: Sīkūlūjīyah al-khuṭūṭ [How to Read an Image: The Psychology of Lines]. Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-‘Arabi, 1967.

Kitābāt fī al-fann al-shaʻbī: Muḥāwalah li-fahm judhūr al-fann al-shaʻbī bi-mintaqat al-Sharq al-Awsaṭ [Writings on Folk Art: An Attempt at Understanding the Roots of Folk Art in the Middle East]. Cairo: al-Hayʼah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʻAmmah lil-Kitāb, 1976.

al-Rumūz al-tashkīlīyah fī al-siḥr al-shaʻbī [Graphic Symbols of Folk Magic]. Āfāq al-fann al-tashkīlī. Cairo: al-Hayʼah al-ʻĀmmah li-Quṣūr al-Thaqāfah, 1999.