Exhibition in Cairo casts a look at 1980s art
Five artists of the 1980s came together in Cairo’s Soma Art Gallery to showcase their work from 30 years ago.
The “Artwork From the 1980s” exhibition in Cairo casts a fond glance at the Egyptian art scene of 30 years ago, when the government was the largest patron of the arts and folk art was a main trend.
Heba el-Moez, the director of Soma Art Gallery, told Al-Monitor, "We came up with this idea to give the audience an opportunity to see artwork from more than 30 years ago and see how Egyptian art has changed.”
The artists are Omar El Fayoumi, Mohamed Abla, Nazli Madkour, Adel El Siwi and Samir Fouad Ibrahim — a diverse group whose works are widely different from each other in style, materials used and size.
The artists say that the absence of the internet and social media back then made the artists more isolated and consequently more individualist. They also had to spend a lot of time researching and reading about art trends and struggled to find the means to study abroad so that they could observe different schools and trends in art.
