The “Generations of Art” group exhibition at Cordoba Gallery showcases selected paintings by Youssef Kamel, Abdel-Aal Hassan, Ali Al-Ahwany, Mohamed Al-Nasser, Ayman Qadry, Mohamed Azmy and Farid Fadel. Abdel-Aal Hassan is one of the leading artists in the Egyptian press, with work that ranges from portraiture to sailboats and landscapes. Following in the footsteps of portrait pioneers Ahmed Sabry, Sabry's student Hussein Bikar, then Sabry Ragheb, Ezzeddin Hammouda and Hassan Suleiman, Abdel-Aal Hassan added to the original formulations of this art dimensions of magic and beauty. The artist was attracted to banat el-balad (or local girls, who include urban working-class and oases girls), and not only the banat Bahari famously depicted by Alexandrian artist Mahmoud Said, whom he portrayed in a photorealistic style. His Sinai girls celebrated the liberation of the peninsula in 35 paintings full of feeling, indulging the artist's fascination with whispering, shyness, contemplation, ambiguity, silence. All of this is brilliantly communicated in pastels, a rough and dense material capable of the widest range of expressions but also so tough if only complies with the artist who tames it.