Acclaimed Egyptian painter George Bahgory creates cubist-style paintings that tap into the colourful history of Egyptian popular culture and heritage. He began his career as a cartoonist in the late 1950s for a magazine called Rose El Youssef. Bahgory’s figurative style, sarcasm, and political awareness and satire infiltrated his later transition to painting. Among a generation of cartoonists that promoted the Nasserist ideology of Pan-Arabism, women’s rights, and national reform, Bahgory infuses his artworks with the residue of Egyptian national history and culture. Periodically using references to popular icons of the era, like diva Umm Kalthoum, in his painted works, Bahgory’s paintings playfully evoke a sense of deep nostalgia, historical reflection, and cultural preservation. “With every stroke of the brush, I recall an Egypt that I don’t want to disappear,” Bahgory said in an interview with Al Ahram newspaper.
About the Artist
George Bahgoury, titled “The Granddaddy of Egyptian Caricature,” was born in Luxor in 1932. He is an Egyptian-French contemporary artist who possesses an exceptional mastery of painting, sculpture, painting, and caricature amongst many other artistic mediums.
Bahgoury made his way to the top of the Egyptian art scene with steady steps that started by studying at the Fine Arts Faculty in Zamalek, then later moved on to study fine arts at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Before making a name for himself as a world-renowned cubist painter, George Bahgoury initiated his career in art as a cartoonist in the Egyptian publication ‘Rose El-Youssef’, in 1950; where his piercing reflections on the political and cultural zeitgeist of the time made him rise to prominence among Egypt’s best cartoonists and caricature artists. With the Nasserist ideology of Pan-Arabism, women’s rights, and national reform seeping into Bahgoury and his peers’ work at the time, he skillfully integrated various notions of Egypt’s culture and national history into his work, and naturally, George Bahgoury’s figurative style, satire, and political awareness transposed to his paintings. Influenced by Pablo Picasso’s modern surreal cubism, Egyptian modernist Abdel Hadi Al Gazzar’s folk imprint, German expressionist Paul Klee, and Egyptian Fayoum portraits.
