SHAKER EL MAADAWY

"Abstract Composition VII" Watercolor painting 14" x 10" in by Shaker El Maadawy

1991

Shaker El Maadawy graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in painting in 1967 in his native Alexandria. Although El Maadawy held no solo exhibitions with Safarkhan during his career as an artist, he was nevertheless one of the Egyptian Modernist period’s preeminent watercolorists, producing the majority of his known catalogue of works in aquarelle, which he applied to ordinary sketchbook paper. El Maadawy’s work straddles the boundaries between the abstract and figurative, with many of his soothing watercolor painting displaying the illusions or outlines of dreamlike ethereal figures that are simultaneously at one with their surroundings. These figures are almost entirely feminine in form, and they are often seamlessly incorporated into the background contents or other elements of his paintings, like plant life or animals in the tranquility of grazing bulls and resting doves. El Maadawy since his death has become a more frequent fixture across galleries in the capital of Cairo and his hometown Alexandria, and his expertise as a watercolorist is gaining more recognition for its subtle complexity, and its demonstration of a painting style that is amongst contemporary art fast becoming a relic of the past seldom practiced. We are pleased to have some of the last remaining works of his collection, aquarelle paintings that range from tessellated abstract compositions, to landscape scenery to illustrations of man and animal, often with an unmistakable paradisiac quality. El Maadawy has received notable exposure abroad, regionally in places like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. He was posthumously honored at a special ceremony in the Bibliotheca Alexandria alongside several of his fellow peers that passed away that same year.