Rania Khallaf is amazed by the prevailing earthy colour Along-awaited exhibition of works by Ahmed El-Ghoul opened last week at the Khan Al-Maghrabi Gallery. The collection of works exhibited is not new: the sculptures and paintings, however, seem to be a blend of future and past. Born in 1933 in the village of Fazara, Sohag, Ahmed El-Ghoul is considered to be one of the leading figures of the Egyptian modern art movement. A professor of sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria, El-Ghoul has endowed his expertise to many of the younger generation of artists in this country. His works have been exhibited in many places including Italy, South Korea and Poland. The last exhibition he held was in South Korea in 1999, where he received warm acclaim. El-Ghoul's early work was largely influenced by the surrounding environment during his rural childhood. "My father was the mayor of the villages of Fazara and Juhayna, and built a house almost inside a branch of the river, so you can imagine the magnificence of the view and the endless opportunity for meditation that was bestowed on me at this very young age," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. He produced his very first sculpture at the age of seven, using the clay at his feet to make his early creations. His sculptures still reflect this childlike soul, and his subjects, whether animals or children, all have a look of surprise as though, created on canvas, they are suddenly aware of their existence: a piece dating from 1964 features the face of a young girl with her eyes and tiny open mouth showing complete astonishment. Her eyes tell a lot. It is as if she is amazed and overwhelmed by a brand new aspect of civilisation or a massive ongoing change. The sculpture is made of light brown clay. One of his paintings, which dates even further back to 1957, features rag dolls dressed in bright colours; again the degrees of brown prevail. But as the dolls gaily hold up their arms and dance, there is a huge black monster in the background that attempts to frighten them. El-Ghoul, now 77, recalls the stories his parents told him of the deep waters of the sea. "They used to scare me and say there was a monster that had red eyes; its head was levelled with the sky and it walked on the surface of the water. So I used to be scared of water and spend the night thinking of the monster and imagining its shape. I still remember the fairy tales my mother used to tell me, and they are inscribed in my memory." He uses as many materials as are available in his world: polyester, clay, wood and iron, and he has further conducted much research into pigments. "I found out that orange is the most active of all colours, and has the ability to reflect energy on the viewer," he says. Indeed, "The Orange" was the title of his last exhibition, which was opened by Nobel laureate Ahmed Zuweil at the creativity palace in Alexandria in 1999. "The exhibition, which I consider one of my favourites, included some huge works with a height I estimated at nine metres. The works dealt with bizarre issues such as man's journey to the moon and the invasion by man of other planets, and the sufferings of the Iraqi people. Another unforgettable work was a huge fish inside which the prophet Younis is lying peacefully." The River Nile and the small sailing ships are recurrent themes in his works. "My family owned another old house that was built by one of my grandfathers some 200 years ago in the Western Desert. As a child I liked to go there very much in the summer time. I would take off my clothes and swim in the well nearby, to escape the scorching sun. I used to sense a strange music going on inside me, and since I failed to become a musician this inner music was there to colour all my artistic works afterwards," he said somewhat wistfully. "I was also largely affected by popular tales that had a real origin, the sort that were told by musicians who played the rababa, the traditional Egyptian instrument that resembles the violin. These tales were also exuberant with imagination, with symbols and fantastic images of birds fighting with swords; I lived in Upper Egypt at this time, and it seemed to me that life there resembled the tales of cowboys in the American West, where each family had to be protected by a gangster." In the mid-1940s El-Ghoul also wrote poetry in the colloquial language of Upper Egypt. He received a PhD in philosophy of art in 1997, and his works have been acquired by the Modern Art Museum in Cairo and other open-air areas in Alexandria, where he currently lives.
