Of the coterie of contemporary Egyptian artists participating in the group exhibition of paintings Art for All – currently on display at the Salama Gallery – Effat Hosny, one of our best respected veterans, is this week's focus. Hosny's touch remains entirely unique even though he changes and mixes approaches, employing surrealism and art nouveau among other styles. Fond of decorative motifs and soft human formations, so much so that his paintings look like jewellery displays – their surface studded with sapphires, red agate and green turquoise – he creates illogical and magical relations between the various figurative elements of his paintings. Hosny has been working in as an illustrator in the press for 30 years and has emerged in this field, becoming one of its luminaries as well as a painter. But I came to know the artist through his amazing drawings, which were published in Al-Musawwar magazine and other Egyptian and Arab publications, especially children's magazines, as he became one of the most prominent illusrators of children's books and magazines in the Arab world. Then I met Hosny, the wonderful person, and entered into his rich and unique world of painting through a number of solo exhibitions, visits to his atelier and ongoing dialogue with him. Hosny's works are musical fantasias or fine art epics, representing an extension of the magical approach that began to crystallise in Egyptian fine art with the second generation and peaked in the work of the third generation in the middle of the last century. His works are not only inspired by cultural heritage but also immersed in the folk reality with its rituals, beliefs and celebrations: singer, dancer, bird and animal are all one, in moving yet still, both clear and mysterious. The exhibition is on until the end of the summer season.
