Youssef Kamel

Abstract

Youssef Kamel is one of the leading painters of a generation of Egyptian artists known as the "pioneers" (ar-ruwwād). He was among the first students to attend the Madrassat al-Funun al-Jamila al-Misriyya (the Egyptian School of Fine Arts), where he graduated in 1911. In 1925, he received a scholarship to study in Rome. On his return to Cairo in 1929, he was appointed professor at the School of Fine Arts and became the head of the Painting Department in 1937. He served as director of the Mathaf al-Fann al-Hadith (Museum of Egyptian Modern Art) from 1948 to 1949 and of the School of Fine Arts in Cairo from 1950 to 1953. Kamel is renowned for his impressionist landscapes of the Egyptian countryside and views of medieval Cairo.​​

Biography​​

Youssef Kamel was born in the neighborhood of el-Dahir in Cairo. In 1908, he was among the first students to join the School of Fine Arts in Cairo together with artists Mahmoud Mokhtar (1891–1934), Ragheb Ayad (1892–1982), Antoine Haggar (1896-1962), and Mohammed Hassan (1892–1961). The school was founded in the same year by Prince Youssef Kamal (1882-1967). Kamel studied in the painting section under the Italian painter Paolo Forcella (1868–?). He graduated in 1911. The same year, he participated in the first exhibition of the School of Fine Arts students at the Automobile Club in Cairo. In 1912, he was appointed as a drawing teacher in secondary schools. Between 1921 and 1922, Kamel and his friend, the painter Ragheb Ayad, agreed to an exchange under which each would work in turn as a teacher for one year to finance the other's stay in Italy.

In 1925, Kamel received a scholarship to pursue his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma (Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome) together with his colleagues, the artists Ragheb Ayad and Mohammed Hassan. He shared a studio with them in Rome and studied under the renowned Italian painter Umberto Coromaldi (1870–1948). During that period, he made several copies of Italian masterpieces in the collection of the Villa Borghese and painted a series of vedute, Italian townscape views, featuring Roman antique and Renaissance monuments, a genre he would later transpose to medieval Cairo. After receiving his diploma from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma, Kamel returned to his homeland in 1929 and was appointed professor of painting at the School of Fine Arts in Cairo. In 1937, he became head of the painting section when the Alexandrian painter and diplomat Mohammed Naghi (1888–1956) was director of the institution. Kamel also served as a curator and directed the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art from 1948 to 1949, before he was named director of the School of Fine Arts in Cairo from 1950 to 1953.

Youssef Kamel belongs to a generation of Egyptian artists commonly referred to as the pioneers (ar-ruwwād), as they were the first to be educated in artistic institutions established according to European models, such as the School of Fine Arts in Cairo. Kamel remained faithful to the lessons of his two Italian teachers, Paolo Forcella and Umberto Coromaldi, who were both followers of the plein air Macchiaioli movement. They introduced him to the technique of oil painting and the genres of landscape, nudes, and portraits, which Kamel adapted to Egyptian subjects. His work expresses a sense of peacefulness and a nostalgic timelessness through light strokes and gentle colors. Kamel also portrayed some of his contemporaries and friends with great sincerity, such as the sculptor Mahmoud Mokhtar, as well as individuals from the countryside and the working-class neighborhoods of Cairo. His works can be found in private collections, the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art in Cairo, the Agricultural Museum in Cairo, and the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha. Unfortunately, an important collection of his works was stolen in 2012 after the looting of his family villa in the Matariya neighborhood of northern Cairo, where many of his paintings were preserved.

Bibliography

El-Shimi, Rowan. "Yusuf Kamel's art vanishes in Egypt's security vacuum." Al-Ahram online, Accessed January 14, 2025: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentPrint/5/0/53131/Arts--Culture/0/Youssef-Kamels-art-vanishes-in-Egypts-security-vac.aspx

Iskandar, Rushdī, al-Mallākh, Kamāl, al-Shār­ūnī, Ṣubḥī. 80 sana min al-fann: 1908-1988, (Eighty Years of Art: 1908-1988). Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization, 1991.

Seggerman, Alex Dika. Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contemporary. Chapel Hill, USA: University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

Radwan, Nadia. Dal Cairo a Roma. Visual Arts and Transcultural Interactions between Egypt and Italy. Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques, 70(4):1093-1114, 2016.

Radwan, Nadia. Les Modernes d'Égypte: Une Renaissance des Beaux-Arts et des Arts Appliqués (1908-1938). Berne, Switzerland: Peter Lang AG., 2017.

Further Reading

Abaza, Mona. Twentieth-Century Egyptian Art: The Private Collection of Sherwet Shafei. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2011.

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

Karnouk, Liliane. Modern Egyptian Art (1910-2003). Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2005.