Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Alexandria
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner,
Originally commissioned by the Museum of Artist's Self-Portraits, Florence

Literature:
Sobhy El Sharouny, Dar El Shorouk, Hussein Bikar, Cairo, 2002, illustrated on the front cover and on page 125

Notes:
Accompanied by a handwritten explanatory note by the artist

"I saw the setting sun glimpsing
through a crack in the prison wall
through the wire and the iron
it crept and there my vision started
All at once I looked up
a flight of birds filled the distance
As though someone was celebrating a feast
unveiling a happiness
I praised the ways of God
transforming the ancient anew
this land, this Egypt
awakens too,
from and old decrepit age,
sheds all wrinkles and is again
a youthful bride."


TWO HIGHLY IMPORTANT PAINTINGS BY HUSSEIN BICAR FROM A DISTINGUISHED EGYPTIAN COLLECTION INCLUDING HIS SEMINAL SELF-PORTRAIT "THE GREEN PLANET"



"Perhaps the masterpiece amongst Bicar's self-portraits is the one in which he appears amongst high bars with a green moon behind him."
- Sobhy El-Sharouny


Hussein Bicar – "The White Shirt"

"A few years ago, I received a letter from the Italian Cultural Centre in Cairo, containing an official invitation from the Museum of Self-Portraits in Italy [The Vasari Corridor at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence] inviting me to provide them with a self-portrait to be displayed in the museum.
I was filled with a sense of arrogance and pride when I was invited to take part, as this would place me amongst the worlds most acclaimed international artists.

When I began to paint, the idea occurred to me to summarise my life trajectory in a symbolic way; the hero of my life would be a man engulfed in bleak surroundings, but an optimistic Green Planet would appear in the sky lighting his way, and carry him to his fate. The man ends as a passenger under the care of the Green Planet, thus completing his journey.

My hero, satisfied with his destiny, free from all pretence, wears a simple white vest that covers his nakedness. He passes out of the physical realm with a heart full of peace and serenity, which is the ultimate goal of every human being"

Perhaps one of Bicar's most distinguished and well known artworks, "Green Planet" appears on the front cover the artists major monograph by Sobhy El-Sharouny. Ethereal, unearthly, and exhibiting a palpable mystique, Bicars self-portrait is imbued with both pathos and mystery.

Painted in 1981, Bicar's composition comes at a time when the artist was coming under heavy persecution as a leader in Egypt's Bahai community. Bahaism, founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 19th-century Persia, blended elements of Abrahamic and mystical religions into a belief system which emphasized the unity of faith and religious plurality.

In the 1980s, the Egyptian government arrested a number of Bahá'ís, including Bicar, who was one of the high-profile leaders of the community. The Bahá'ís were accused of trying to proselytize, which was banned in Egypt in the 1960s. Bicar recalls that on one night during his time awaiting trial, in a dark and claustrophobic cell, he had a vision of one of the prison bars in front of him dissolving and a Green Planet in the horizon leading him into the light of freedom; it was this vision which formed the basis for his Self-Portrait and which would be a recurrent theme in subsequent works.

Highly esoteric and self-reflective, the use of a private narrative and deeply personal symbolism is a stark contrast to Bicar's more purely artistic, stylized depictions of Egyptian every-day life. Turning the lens inwards, Bicar's mode of representation changes almost entirely, blending the extreme realism honed during his years as an accomplished portrait artist, with a system of private allegories.

A painting which deftly captures the artist's raw, unpretentious appearance, Bicars Self-Portrait is also permeated with personal reflections on his life trajectory and perceptions of self, making "Green Planet" almost unique amongst Bicar's oeuvre in its humanity and resonance.


- Hussein Bicar –

As an artist, Bicar was considered a tour de force of talent; teacher, illustrator, painter, poet and musician, Bicar embraced the arts in their totality achieving renown in many of the fields he applied his trade to.
Born in 1913 in Alexandria, Egypt, He graduated from Fine Arts College in 1933, and subsequently from the Ahlia School for Painting. He taught at, and eventually headed the Painting Department of the Faculty of Arts at Qena at 1955. He was a founder of the Helwan Wax Museum.

In 1944, Bicar began his career in journalism when he became, with Ahmad Sabry, Mustapha Amin and Ali Amin, one of the founding fathers of the prestigious Akhbar el-Youm newspaper, doing drawings often accompanied by his own poetrys. His painting "The Eighth Wonder", depicting the transportation of the temple of Ramses II to Abu Simbel is widely regarded as a classic of modern Egyptian painting.

Bicar was honoured with several awards including, the Golden Medal of Honor from the Industrial and Agriculture Exhibition in 1949, the Medal of Arts and Science in 1967, Gamal Abdel Nasser Prize in 1975, the State of Merit Award in 1978, the Merit Medal in 1980, and shortly before his death in 2000, Mubarak Award.

Adept at drawing for children, Bicar also became a foreign correspondent who wrote and illustrated stories of his travels. He produced sketches of news and feature subjects when photography was not common in his homeland. In his later years, Bicar was better known for painting portraits, particularly of women. He also wrote criticism and taught for many years at Cairo's Fine Arts Academy.

Bicar's distinction as an artist lies in the economy and terseness of his compositions; his ability to apply pure and simple lines to landscape and anatomy was central to the sense enigma and quiet mystery surrounding his paintings.