Access Gallery in Cairo is giving its visitors a chance to experience the Egyptian art scene in the first half of the 20th century by hosting the first retrospective exhibition of pioneering visual artist Fahima Amin.
Titled, ‘History of Fahima Amin’, the exhibition features works by the late artist (1918-1984).
The works exhibited give visitors insights into the different stages of the life and the career of the late artist.
They document her professional achievements and the difficulties she faced.
Most of the works exhibited were made during the 1930s and the 1940s. They depict different aspects of social life in this period.
Access Gallery Coordinator, Mayar Gaber, said this is the first time Amin’s works come together in one and the same place.
”This happens for the first time since the artist’s death,” Gaber told the Egyptian Mail in an interview on the sidelines of the exhibition.
She said Amin is little known to many people, even as she is one of the pioneers of visual art in Egypt.
”This boils down to the lack of documentation,” she said.
Amin belongs to the first generation of Higher Institute for Art Teachers students.
The institute qualifies students for a career in art through its study. Some of its graduates prefer to work in art teaching, while others prefer to do art.
The History of Fahima Amin exhibition throws light on how Amin did art.
It highlights her artistic journey, being one of the earliest female artists in the Arab world.
The exhibition’s works also highlight some of the features of women’s cultural and artistic renaissance in this period, according to visual artist, Nagy Moussa.
Moussa, a son of Amin, added that the exhibition in a way demonstrates the pioneering role of women in the arts.
”It shows how Amin was able to prove herself at an early stage in the history of the arts in Egypt,” a local newspaper quoted him as saying.
As an artist, Amin was diverse, having mastered different types of arts and succeeded in freeing herself from being confined in one art type.
The exhibition contains sketches made by Amin, together with an anatomical study, water paintings, oil paintings and gouache paintings which were new at the time.
It also displays Amin’s portraits of nature and the human body.
”Her works are very diverse,” Gaber, the Access Gallery coordinator, said. “She expresses herself, through art, in a distinctive way.”
One of the paintings exhibited depicts scenes of Egyptian daily life, with people wearing traditional Egyptian clothes.
It shows two women in the vegetable market, emblazoning their facial features and clothes through a set of wonderful water colours and ink.
The way the background is painted focuses onlookers’ attention on the two women.
Another painting shows a man lost in a garden. It puts the trees and the flowers of the garden under sharp focus, using gouache colours, which adds joy and optimism to the painting.
Some of the paintings exhibited reflect human suffering and human depths, putting women at the centre of all this.
Amin’s productions included a guide in Arabic that contains the biographies of a large number of Egyptian and foreign artists. The guide was published in 1971.
Amin was among the first group to graduate from the Higher Institute for Art Teachers in 1944.
When she joined the institute a few years earlier, she was one of six girls only doing this.
She chose the Fine Arts for Drawing and Painting Department.
Amin participated in the 24th Cairo Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, even before she graduated from the institute.
One of her paintings was nominated for the top prize of the exhibition.
She introduced a variety of paintings that appeared in several exhibitions in the Egyptian capital then.
The current exhibition also features public events and family photos of Amin.
