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Adel El Siwi in his studio, Cairo 2005

Adel El Siwi

Adel El Siwi is a well-known painter, born in 1952 in Behara, Egypt. He trained first of all as a medical doctor, but during that time was also studying art and painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo. By 1979 he had taken up painting full-time and between 1980 and 1990 lived in Milan before coming back to Cairo to live and work.

During the 1990s he was a member of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Culture, edited an arts magazine and initiated an experimental community arts project. He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, as well as in Mexico, China, France, Turkey, Italy, Switzerland, South Africa, Portugal and India.

He has accomplished several major art translation projects into Arabic, notably of the writings of Leonardo da Vinci and of Paul Klee; and in January this year he celebrated his translation into Arabic of the complete works of the poet Ungaretti (Merit, 2007).

Talking about his art work now, he says: “Since the early 1990s, I deserted my old concern: the city and places. I moved to the human face where I no longer scattered myself over many interests . . . I feel the urge to stop at specific faces . . .”

Baladi woman’s face, 1999, 25 x 35cm, mixed media on hardboard

Africa , 1996, 70 x 50 cm, mixed media on paper

Front cover: The Prince, 2002, 70 x 100 cm, mixed media and gold on cotton paper