It took me almost two years to arrange for an interview with the artist Omar Al-Fayoumi, not just because he was always busy but also because his mood kept changing. His 2012 exhibition, “Cafés”, continued to haunt me, especially his painting of the novelist Mekkawi Said, a café lover if ever there was one. When I first contacted Al-Fayoumi, he said, “You are welcome to visit me at my atelier-home on Mohamed Ali Street,” and at the time I thought it would be too distracting to have a conversation in such a densely populated part of the city. The other choice he suggested was a downtown café, an even worse setting and one I wouldn't be comfortable with. A year later, we became Facebook friends. This is yet another café where Al-Fayoumi spends time, sharing views and literary quotes with his friends. A few weeks ago we finally arrived at a deal: I would visit at his atelier, but then we would go elsewhere for the interview. The flat turned out to be a beautiful small museum. Located on a narrow alley off Mohamed Ali Street, surrounded by carpentry workshops, the old building recalled the old alleyways of Italy: an isolated and quiet island in a turbulent sea. I was served a cup of tea after which I roamed around the place, overwhelmed by its many artistic touches, the paintings, personal photos and self-portraits hanging on the walls. Sociable as he was, Al-Fayoumi could barely conceal his desire to be left alone. He mentioned his many brothers and sisters, how he is not on good terms with them, and loneliness at 56. At noon he invited me to share his lunch of Russian-style meatballs and pasta, and while eating he spoke more openly. He looked healthy and cheerful but could not get over the idea that he was getting old. “My father died at age of 60, my grandfather too. I guess I am going to die at the same age,” he confided. Since 1982, as well as exhibitions all around the world, Al-Fayoumi has given 10 solo exhibitions in Cairo, his latest being a small one last month in the framework of the Egyptian-Russian celebration of the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations. It included paintings made in 2009 and 2010, reflecting his unique poetic style and his infatuation with popular places and regular people. This atmosphere informs his work because he experienced café life at a very early age. “Accompanied by my late father, I had been to Dokki cafés by the time I was almost 12. I found my way to one of the neighborhood cafés at Tahrir Street, Dokki, bought some cigarettes and sat down to drink tea. It's a joy to watch people just walking the streets, and watch café goers pouring in their misery or exhaling sadness while smoking shisha. These are rare moments, and they still inspire me,” he said with a beaming smile. “This special joy continued when I was a university student, sitting beside an old fountain beside the Mogamaa at Tahrir Square.” He looks up. “It was a beautiful place back then in the late 1970s. “I started painting sketches of cafés in the 1980s. I was infatuated with the works of my mentor Hamed Nada. A few years after my graduation, I went to Luxor on a scholarship, but I was largely shocked by the huge spaces and restricted diversity of colors. I actually could not do a remarkable job there. When I came back to Cairo, I was keen on finding my artistic forte. It was the legendary radio announcer Shawki Fahim's birthday, and I thought of giving him a special present. I had always liked his special posture, sitting at the café, his face resting on one hand. It was a small painting 30x45cm, and it was done in a modern style. This was the start, I believe, of my special type of art, my endless infatuation of portraits and cafés. And since then, I started sketching people sitting in cafés... ” It was this drive that resulted in his first exhibition, which included portraits in cafés and also natural scenes in Luxor. “Even when I travelled to Russia to study, it was a nostalgic artistic habit to sit in my small atelier to draw what I remembered from my life at Cairo's cafés,” he recalled. “Cafés in Russia and most European countries are completely different; they are mainly located at first floor-buildings and behind closed doors, no shisha smokers, and no warm feelings. Even outdoor cafés in Tunisia, where I spent around four years, do not have this special spirit of our cafés.” A year later, Al-Fayoumi held his second exhibition on cafés at the Abdel-Moneim Al-Sawi Gallery in Nasr city. “When I came back from Russia, where I studied and produced different kinds of art, drawing cafés, portraits and icons became my specialty.” Starting from the mid-1990s, he started painting portraits that are influenced by the Fayoum funerary portraits, his systematic study of which was completed in 1997. “I remember a Lebanese lady who was over 50, a big fan of my portraits, which have this influence of the Fayoum portraits, and after she visited my exhibition at the Karim Francis Gallery, she wanted to purchase some portraits; however, she thought they were too gloomy to adorn her apartment in Lebanon,” he laughed. Of all the faces he sketched and painted, he only accomplished eight self-portraits in different stages: the first was when he was a university student. “I was completely bald. And it was an excellent one, but I stupidly decided to tear it up. I did not want it to be my ideal model. I thought it would hinder or limit my creative aspirations, and this was stupid,” he nodded. “The next one,” he continued, “was in Russia. I actually produced four there, technically like the original icon.” He painted few portraits of well-known characters; these included the writer Mohamed Salmawy and the late scholar Abdel-Wahab Al-Misseri; his main interest remains in close friends and ordinary people, whom he sees every day on the street. Al-Fayoumi's expressionist oil paintings mostly revolve around cafés and homes, his neighbors. One exception to Al-Fayoumi's distinguished works is a mural in old Cairo, at the Religions Compound area, that mixes the Coptic with ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman styles. “It was in 2000. It was challenging to paint a mural in such an open place, with a relatively high pollution rate but thank God it is still in good condition,” he said. One of the amazing artistic phenomena in Egypt recently, he feels, is the graffiti, which he considers as an open museum of young, progressive art. As to his infatuation with funerary portraits and Coptic icons, “It is ancient Egyptian art, known long before Coptic art as such,” he says. “And the funerary portrait is completely different from the icon. People tend to confuse the two. I was haunted by the love of these portraits since I was a university student in the 1970s. I used to visit the Egyptian Museum many times every week, to look on each and every portrait, as if they were my friends, and then just go home,” he smiled. But it was not before 1997 that Al-Fayoumi finally decided to start a new line of art that is largely inspired by the Fayoum portraits; he held his first exhibition on the Fayoum portraits at the Karim Francis Gallery, downtown. “If you just spend enough time gazing into these faces, and then make a round of downtown or old Cairo, you will be amazed by the similarities between the faces of people in the streets and the Fayoum portraits,” he continued. “My roots are in Fayoum, my grandfathers used to live there some 400 years ago. I frequently go there to spend time with friends, but have no special attachment to the place. I am in love with Cairo, this catastrophic capital, with all its disadvantages,” he giggles. “I travelled lately to one of the most beautiful places in old Rome, and I stayed there for two months; I felt I wanted to go home almost before the end of the first month. There is an Egyptian proverb saying: ‘You could not step in a paradise vacant of people!'” Asked about his mentors, Al-Fayoumi quickly mentions Nada, William Ishaq and Andrei Rublev (d. 1427), the greatest mediaeval Russian icon painter. “I produced many paintings inspired by his works, especially of his famous paintings entitled ‘The Holy Trinity'. I remember back in the early 1980s, I went with a friend to watch Tarkovsky's 1966 film on Rublev at the Cinema Institute in Cairo, long before I even thought of going to Russia. In 1986, on the first day of my arrival in Leningrad, I happened to watch the same film. And on my first visit to the Hermitage Museum, I was astonished to find a big exhibition to the artistic works of the 15th century, including the works of Rublev. I thought, what a coincidence! However, my passion for artworks is not restricted to the art produced in a certain region, for art knows no boundaries...” Born in 1957, Al-Fayoumi graduated in 1981 from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo, in the mural painting department. He lived in Russia, in the city of Rippen, from 1986 to 1991, where he obtained his PhD in 1991. He remembers a day, some 25 years ago, walking out of the students' hostel in Leningrad, when he came across a Russian young woman looking fixedly at him. She seemed to want to say something but was reluctant. It was a cold night with a full moon. “Then,” he recalls, “she suddenly said, ‘I have just seen the moon,' and swiftly kissed me, blushing as she added, ‘On a night like this, if anyone saw the full moon, they should kiss the first person they meet.' The following day, she passed me and acted as if she had never seen me before,” he recounted in a nostalgic tone. “It was a very rich period in my life; I lived mostly in Leningrad, studied, worked on icon restoration, made pottery, painted many significant paintings and visited most of the museums in Russia. Respect for artists there is remarkable, and the community presents considerable services for artists, though it is really hard for any student to be accepted in the academy of arts,” he added. “My vision of colour also changed. I was surrounded by art museums and other facilities that made art very engaging. In general, any travel even for a short time will influences the artist's vision and experience,” he said. Al-Fayoumi believes that love for the arts starts at school. “Russians know how to teach their children the love of art, and they know how to connect artists with school students in special programmes. Unfortunately in Egypt, the land of art and civilisation, we tend to see art classes as an inferior activity,” he said in a sad tone. Women and cats are recurrent themes in his work, but his women are peculiar; they carry old facial features, beaming with smiles that are a mix of sadness, sorrow and contentment. They are silent, but they keep talking a special language. However, he will not talk about the women in his life, his past marriages, or the type of women he likes. He would rather talk about Kameesh, his favourite cat, who died almost a year ago in an accident. Al-Fayoumi used to cater to and adopt cats for many years; Kameesh was his favourite one, and sadly enough his last pet. After he died, Al-Fayoumi refused to have another one, despite his loneliness. He felt sad and guilty for his death, and thought it was enough, while at home, to have his paintings, books and his friends on Facebook's chat box. “I feel content,” he told me, in a wise tone, “when I am surrounded by people who understand and appreciate my meaningful silence.”
