Nagui's museum, landmark of modern Egyptian art
Egypt, Culture, 9/24/2001

The building of a museum is synonymous to preserving the nation's memory with a view to tracing the intimate relations between genuineness of the pact and ambitions for the future. Museums have no longer become ivory towers with their old traditions, but have been turned into vivid places using new attractions.

The upgraded museum of Mohammed Nagui that lies at Al Ashram Gardens near the Cairo Alexandria desert road speaks of the beauty of its repertoire. In 1962 the museum opened at Nagui's atelier in which he started painting. The main purpose for finding this studio was nagui's quest for a suitable place to complete his huge 7 x 3 painting entitled Alexandria school, which he started in 1939. The painting moved with Nagui from place to place until it finally settled at the atelier.

The painting, which was exhibited at Venice biennial was greatly admired by onlookers and it now ornaments the conventions hall of Alexandria governorate headquarters.

After the death of Nagui, the ministry of culture made a deal with his sister Effat in 1962 to purchase the atelier to turn it into a museum. In 1968 it was officially opened to the public.

In 1991 the museum was reopened after undergoing restoration that turned it into a distinguished cultural centre provided with a variety of services.

The museum comprises two major halls; the first includes some of Nagui's oil paintings and personal belongings. It also includes his huge 310 x 190 cm oval painting "dates harvest" that decorates the ceiling.

This painting, is one of the best that comes under his impressionist expression.

The other new hall is much larger and embraces most of his outstanding paintings.

Born in 1888 in Alexandria to a father known for his fondness for music and for his elite cultural background, Mohammed Nagui was sent to the Swiss school in Alexandria. In 1906 he went to France to join Leon university to study law. He used to spend his leisure time at museums and exhibitions and there he was attached to the school of impressionism.

Nagui's distinguished repertoire includes a painting in china ink which he painted when he was less than 14 years of age. However he produced his first oil painting in 1904, which he gave to his mother as a gift.

returning home from France Nagui went to Luxor where he was enchanted by the murals at temples and tombs.

In 1912 he took an atelier at Darbel Labana at the citadel area in a place later known as the house of artists. There he accomplished several of his distinguished paintings as dates harvest, st. Catherine, Towing of Boats.

Nagui pursued further studies abroad. After graduating from the academy of Fine Arts in Florence in 1914, he headed to south France to learn at the hands of the French artist Claude Monet ( 1840-1926) the pioneer of the Impressionism School. Upon the outbreak of the 1919 revolution in Egypt he returned. Fomented by national enthusiasm he started paint Isis Parade which has been hung at the Shura Council since 1922.

In 1924, he joined the diplomatic corps and was appointed in Brazil and then in France, where he got acquainted to artists of the cubism school. In 1932 Nagui was dispatched to Ethiopia on a scholarship and there he painted landscapes, scenes from daily life and the Emperor Haile Selassie and his family. This stage is considered the most fertile in his artistic practice where he discovered the impact of light.

Nagui was considered the first to occupy the post of director of the higher school for fine arts in 1937, and then he was appointed director of the modern art museum.

Eight years later, he was given the post of director of the Egyptian academy in Rome, then the cultural counsellor at the Egyptian embassy in Rome.

In 1962, he established Cairo atelier, and was elected his first chairman. Before the establishment of the High Dam he voiced a call in 1954 to save Abu Simbel temple. Mohammed Nagui died at his atelier in 1956.

Nagui is actually considered the founder of the modern Egyptian school of painting. Having a distinguished artistic outlook even before reaching 19 years of age. Nagui was capable of forming harmonious rhythms out of dark colours and of putting side by side colour degrees of the same intensity thus causing a certain glitter. Nagui fills his paintings with ever glittering colours avoiding the moderate colours especially grey. Nagui found a colour degree which gives an impression of light and extended area.

We can dare say that Nagui is an artist who enriched nature. He was able to find in a place, in a face, a fruit or a piece of cloth colour degrees, which the ordinary eye fails to perceive.

Nagui, the spiritual painter was so enthusiastic about the symbolic connotation of legends. His imagination which was fond of the grandiose found inspiration in such myths. But he avoided the problems of narration when dealing with these subjects. On the other hand Nagui was a true Egyptian in painting the Nile, the valley and the poor masses dwelling it.

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