"One-Shot Society", a group of artists working under fine arts professor Abdel-Aziz El-Guindi, has been portraying Egyptian society for the past two decades, writes Mohamed Mursi When you see him surrounded by his disciples the image that comes to mind is that of a modern-day Socrates, a man who dispenses not only wisdom, but also a view of what makes life worth living. In fact, fine arts professor Abdel-Aziz El-Guindi has managed to keep what some people call his academy of art together for the past 20 years, moving with it from street to street and district to district in search of new subject matters. Each Friday El-Guindi meets his students and together they observe and sketch. The group calls itself the Gamaat Al-Laqta Al-Waheda, or "the One-Shot Society", and it has held many exhibitions of members' work, each focussing on an idea or place as seen by the group's members. The subjects are often authentically local -- folksy backstreets, carts, old metro stations, marionettes -- with the work sometimes bordering on the documentary. The group shares a communal breakfast of fuul and falafel with pickles and hot bread when it meets on Fridays, and afterwards members spread out, each picking up his or her angle on the topic of the week. In moments, features of the place selected for that week's study appear on sketchpads and in notebooks, as filtered through each artist's own individual style and experience. El-Guindi cherishes these Friday meetings, and they mean as much to him as romantic dates, he says. The group has now not only succeeded in meeting regularly for 20 years -- quite an accomplishment when one recalls how short-lived some of the art societies formed by the generation of the pioneers in the last century could be -- but it has also succeeded in forming something akin to a school, one that is committed to realism and folk subjects without embellishment or romanticisation. Ahmed Yehia, one of the members of the group, says that what he has learned from El-Guindi goes beyond a love of painting and art. He has also learned things like the need to be committed on important issues in society and the need to mix with people. "We have built up quite a rapport with some of the people in the working-class area in which we work," Yehia says. "They bring us tea and sweets, and they can be quite pleased when they appear in our paintings." Sara Awf, 26, is a new member of the group, and she describes how the idea was born when 15 artists decided to meet to paint every Friday morning in one of Cairo's older quarters. However, the original artists involved could scarcely have expected the idea to succeed in the way that it has, and now the group has more than 60 members. So far, the artists have taken a shot at Al-Megharbilin, Al-Darb Al-Ahmar, Darb Al-Labbana, Geziret Al-Dahab, Maadi, the stores of the Marionettes Theatre, the circus, the Museum of Modern Art, and Souq Al-Silah. In their work, they focus on showing local character, even as the media selected and the styles used have changed over time. At one time, artists in the group tended to use minimal detail and diverse media ranging from coloured paper to wooden plaques, before moving to a period marked by experimentation with poster art and collage. A current exhibition of the group's work features the character of "Aam Khamis the bicycle man," a man who has spent his entire life selling bicycles and apparently has no other ambition. Aam Abdu, the owner of a tea stand in Al-Megharbilin, also features in this exhibition, which opened last week in the Cordoba Gallery in Mohandessin. "The essence of his character lies in a story of struggle and hard work," Awf says. "We don't just paint such people, we also try to bond with them and to learn from them." In a tribute to painter Tahia Halim, the group has also reinterpreted examples of her work, offering new interpretations of her best-known themes. Aam Abdu's face bears the wear and tear of the years, and in some of the pictures he is shown seated by the kiosk he calls his "soul mate", leaning on a chair and resting between orders. "When the moment came to say good-bye, we realised how deep the bonds were that connected us," Awf says. "In that way we had been able to draw closer to ordinary people, and we became more determined than ever to maintain the way we are doing things. This is not just painting or just another exhibition: it is a form of documentation of daily life."
