Ahmad Nawar takes inspiration from the holy land

The artist poses in front of his artwork.

Scenery drawings have been popular throughout the history of art and are still used as a prominent feature in many artistic works. Ahmad Nawar, a contemporary Egyptian artist, in an exhibition held at Hafez Gallery presented a new way of drawing sceneries through various works that showcased selected spots in Jeddah, along with other art pieces of the Kingdom under the theme “Hijaz: Inspiration from the Holy Land”.
In this exhibition, he explored the spirit of the scenery and swarmed it with various expressions. It is not an external image that he presented, but an internal contemplation within his own space.
Born in Gharbia, Egypt in 1945, Ahmed Nawar is a prominent artist whose journey, studies and experiments contributed in swaying the formula of art and influenced the movement in modernism in the region for over 40 years. Through this exhibition, he depicted the scenery’s core, staging a beautiful, brilliant structure that knows no compromise.
Nawar’s art pieces are alive with majestic scenery that creates ethereal patterns of light and shadow and is bathed in swirls of dark spaces and threaded structures.
After graduating from the Faculty of Fine Art, Cairo University in 1967, Nawar obtained a “Professorship” in painting from St. Fernando Academy-Madrid and held the position of Head of the Ministry of Culture, Sector of Fine Arts since 1988. Nawar’s abstract that is injected with geometric sharp shapes in either paintings or installations breaks down the connection between humanity and civilization, while provoking the audience’s emotions, feelings to act in response of rapid transformation and be part of the change, or be the change itself.
“Elevating sceneries and nature above itself carries profound and delightful sensations for art. It’s a sentiment that resembles with the visual engagement of the landscapes,” he said adding, “All my pieces go through a revealing emotion that unveils their secrets, they express all of the nature’s colors in degradations from white to black, traveling between shadowy nets, dark spaces and threaded structures, taking their perfect places in the formation.”
However, this exhibition represents one of the artist’s long experiences in painting. An experience that started in the early sixties when the artist was a young man and executed a huge 30 square meter final year project drawn only in black pencil and titled it “Judgment Day”. An epic and rare work of art honed the artist’s skills in executing a difficult drama subject at an early stage.
Moreover, the most surprising element in his art pieces that were displayed in the exhibition was his use of basic and simple elements, like “Filo master” pencils. He built a world filled with visual elements with these pencils and was able to translate several layers of light and shadows with it.
Adding less of hallucinatory impression, he captures life from realistic scenery and shapes it in an amazing form. In his different pieces of artwork such as pilgrims standing on Mount Arafat, the eye travels from the dark mountain on the top to the pilgrims’ mountain where they are heavily scattered above it. Similarly, in another piece of the traditional maritime ship, Nawar elevated the ship on the top of a hill to infuse it with more importance. His capabilities through such work clearly declare that his performance translates the elements of the work through many shadowy nets that have different degrees and escape routes.
Likewise, in his artwork on Jeddah’s traditional buildings, the artist picks one of the buildings and makes it the leader of the scenery.
Nawar’s main art and structure are built on an essential and steady core, far from changeable features. In most of his paintings, his compositions are meant to be epic and convey the idea of one connected work of art that melts into one solid structure, which is called “Symphonic Pattern”.
Looking at his work, one can say there is less of illusion, only the simplicity of the images that showcase the power of gesture and poise. Besides the extended shores of the abstract idea connect us to these sceneries that one cannot see directly in nature.
After his first solo exhibition in Cairo Atelier in 1965, Nawar held 80 solo exhibitions and over 100 collective exhibitions, art fairs and biennales in Egypt, Norway, Sweden, Spain, France, Kuwait, Iraq, Italy, USA, Cuba, UAE, Austria, Jordan, Morocco, Brazil, Canada, UK and Belgian, just to name a few between 1969 and 2012.