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Lot 410^*

Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar (Egypt, 1925-1965)

Islamic and Indian Art

8 April 2014, 10:30 BST

London, New Bond Street

Sold for £7,500 inc. premium

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Nima Sagharchi

Group Head

Tel: +44 20 7468 8342

Nima.Sagharchi@bonhams.com

Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar (Egypt, 1925-1965)

Untitled
india ink on paper, framed
signed and dated "Elgazzar 64" (bottom right)
executed in 1964
26.5 x 15 cm

Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Canada
Acquired by the above from Safarkhan Gallery, Cairo in 1993

Whilst El Gazzar's early work was distinctly anthropocentric, in later years, and under the influence of the 1952 revolution which saw Egypt's swift industrialization, he became increasingly fixated by the growing hegemony of technology. Witnessing workers slowly being replaced by machines, he rues an industrial culture which has betrayed its reverence of the natural world.

The present work, a zoomorphic interpretation of the Aswan Dam, depicts a creature that is seemingly half animal and half machine. This allegorical figure is rendered in the form of a colossal rooster, a recurring theme in Islamic art and a traditional sign of sustenance, nourishment and "rural plenty". Here it is fierce, mechanised and demonic, built out of nails and scaffolding it signals the death of the traditional rural fabric of Egypt, and harkens a new paradigm bent on asserting the dominance of technology.

Intricate and majestic, with harsh impressionistic pen strokes that blur the exact construction of the figure, El Gazzar's rooster is an unfamiliar and unnatural creature. The present work, depicted less than a year before the artists timely death, demonstrates how fluid and receptive El Gazzar's work was to the world around him, an empathy he experienced not only for the people around him, but one which extended to the very fabric of his surroundings, whose plight is so skilfully and compassionately chronicled in his works.

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