NUHUD
signed in Arabic lower right
acrylic and mixed media on paper, laid on board
94.5 x 64cm; 37 1/4 x 25in
105.5 x 75cm; 41 1/2 x 29 1/2in (framed)

Property from a Private Collection, London

Provenance
Dr Mohammed Said Farsi

Literature
Dr Sobhy Al Sharouny, A Museum in a Book, Cairo,1998, pp. 238 and 240, illustrated

Hamed Abdalla was a pioneer of Egyptian and Arab modernism. A self taught artist from a modest peasant family in upper Egypt, he rose to prominence early in his career. Abdalla started painting at the age of 10 inspired by his fellahs' environment. Later his work centred on his development of what he called 'the Creative word', Arabic words expressed in paint, blending abstraction and human forms to create visual forms that expressed the meaning of those words.

He held his first solo exhibition in 1941, before going on to show widely throughout Egypt in the 1940s including a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art Cairo (1949), when art critics, such as Badr Eddine Abu Ghazi, considered his work as a new school for Egyptian Art. At the same time Abdalla opened his Atelier in Cairo to teach new generation of artists such as Tahia Halim, Gazbia Serri, Enjy Efflatoun, Georges El Bahgory. His first trip to Paris saw him exhibit at the Gallery Bernheim-Jeune (1950), followed by a group show at the Palais du Louvre, and a show at the Egyptian Institute, London (1951). From the mid-1950s he was exhibiting throughout Europe, the US and Asia, including a group show at the Metropolitan Museum, New York (1956). He left Egypt for Denmark (1956) and France (1966), but was commited to the pan Arab movement, and exhibited widely in the Middle East and North Africa. In 1976, an exhibition of his work brought Abdalla back to Cairo for the first time since his emigration and in 1983 he returned for a show commemorating a half century of his art. At the time of his death in Paris, Abdalla had held over 100 solo exhibitions. His works are in various international collections and museums, such as the Egyptian Modern Art Museum Cairo, the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Tate Modern London, the Barjeel Art Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art Tunis, the Mathaf Doha, the Institut du Monde Arabe Paris and the Dalloul Art Foundation Beirut.