Once again distinguished artist Farghali Abdel-Hafiz impressed his fans and art lovers with his newest exhibition significantly entitled, “Athens Farghali” and is currently on show at the Zamalek Art Gallery. Through his long artistic career, the artist has distinguished himself among his contemporaries with his very own unique and unmatchable style. His paintings are characterized by warmth and intimacy depicting the environment and the Egyptian folk architecture through his numerous tours in the ancient cities across the world. This is Abdel-Hafiz's twelfth exhibition in his series of exhibitions focused on cities, this time he chose Athens as the symbol of wisdom and the source of power for the ancient Greeks; Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for at least 7000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BC and its cultural achievements during the fifth century BC laid the foundations of western civilization. For Abdel-Hafiz, Athens is the city of Aristotle and Plato, the city of art and sculpture, the city that celebrated the ancient Egyptian civilization, “Athens is the only European city that supported the Egyptians in their 30 June Revolution in 2013, that was the reason behind my choice of this city to be the hero of this exhibition,” he explained. He added that his love for depicting the ancient cities on canvas will never end and that the past of any nation is never dead and it is not even past. His palette of colours in this exhibition is very rebellious and audacious using florescent yellow, bright rose in a very huge painting for the first time as well as turquoise. The exhibition is running through 2 April.
