This week's focus is all about the art of Farouk Shehata, he is one of the pioneers of graphic design in Egypt who curiously started with realism and ended up with abstraction. In 1962, he graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria after its inauguration in 1958, together with a group of very talented graphic artists specifically the first and the second batch of graduates in 1962 and 1963 such as Said Al-Adawi, Mahmoud Abdallah, Attiya Hussein and Sabri Hegazi. During his long art career, the artist has passed through different art stages and has developed new styles. And, interestingly to see him first starting with the so-called ‘social realism', when he manifested the dilemma of contemporary man in his graphic paintings as represented by the achievements of the 23 July Revolution as in his painting named “The High Dam” as well as depicting the challenges of the Arab world and in particular the Palestinian cause which is still the biggest political question that has not been resolved so far. Born in Alexandria in 1938, through his art, he represented Egypt at Alexandria Biennales for four times, Paris Biennale, Ljubljiana Biennale, Athens Biennale, Florence Biennale, Norway Biennale, Krakow Biennale, Third World Countries London Biennale, Biennale of Germany, Gior Biennale in Hungary, Varna Biennale in Bulgaria, Bangladesh Biennale, Uruguay Biennale, as well as the Japan Biennale. He organized many cultural and artistic activities in Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic and held about 80 exhibitions from 1975 till 1994. His name is mentioned in World Art Encyclopedias: Meyer, the Swiss Who's Who, and the Russian Art Encyclopedia. Shehata's works are on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art
