Omar El-Nagdi

(Egypt, 1931-2019)

Acqua Della Vita (The Water of Life)

Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, California
Gifted by the Artist to the above, Venice, early 1960s
Thence by descent to the present owner

Exhibited:
Venice, Opera Bevilacqua La Masa, Marie Shayans – Omar El Nagdi, 12–29 August 1961 (exhibition poster included);
Venice, XXXI Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte – La Biennale di Venezia, 1962

Published:
Catalogo della XXXI Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte Venezia, page 212


A rare and important 1960 composition by Omar El-Nagdi exhibited at the 31st Venice Biennale in 1962


"In The Water of Life, Omar El Nagdi captures more than the image of Egypt's traditional water-carriers: he evokes the essence of sustenance, resilience, and dignity in Egyptian rural life. The figures, perennially used by artists as symbols of service and community, stand as a tribute to those who bring life to the land.

When the painting was exhibited at the United Arab Republic's stand at the 31st Venice Biennale, a rare record of the brief union between Egypt and Syria (1958–1961), it marked Nagdi's first appearance at the prestigious exhibition and announced him as a vital new voice in modern Arab art. He would return to Venice in the years that followed, but it was with The Water of Life that he first carried the spirit of a unified Arab world onto the global stage"


Painted in 1960, a defining period in the artist's career, this work exemplifies Omar El-Nagdi's commitment to chronicling the dignity and rhythm of everyday life while engaging deeply with Egypt's evolving artistic and social identity in the post-revolution era. A rare and important composition from this period, The Water of Life was exhibited first at the Opera Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice in 1961, and subsequently at the 31st Venice Biennale in 1962; exhibitions that marked El-Nagdi's growing international recognition and positioned him among Egypt's foremost modern artists on the global stage.

El-Nagdi, a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo and later a student of mosaic and fresco in Venice, was part of a generation of artists who sought to reconcile Egypt's folk traditions with modern visual languages. In this work, he fuses the structural sensibility of modernism with a distinctly local subject: the saqqā, or water carrier, a figure long emblematic of endurance and sustenance in rural Egypt. Against an earthy palette of ochres, siennas, and turquoise, the carriers appear in motion, balancing jars and vessels that glisten with reflected light. The rhythmic repetition of forms evokes both the daily labour of village life and the spiritual poetry embedded in communal work.

The early 1960s marked a period of social transformation under Gamal Abdel Nasser, when artists like El-Nagdi turned their gaze towards the people; peasants, artisans, and workers as symbols of a renewed national identity. Here, El-Nagdi's water carriers transcend their role as mere subjects; they become archetypes of resilience and continuity, their presence imbued with a quiet nobility. The artist's use of thick impasto and angular brushwork gives the scene a tactile physicality, recalling both Coptic iconography and early Cubist abstraction while maintaining an unmistakable Egyptian sensibility.

El-Nagdi's work from this period often explored themes of labour, spirituality, and the collective memory of the Nile. Water Carriers stands as a testament to his ability to transform humble, everyday acts into expressions of cultural permanence. It is both a visual homage to Egypt's timeless rural communities and a meditation on the flow of life itself, mirroring the water that sustains them.