The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Zamalek’s Art Corner Gallery has garnered a reputation for exhibiting more versatile art for established as well as young aspiring Egyptian artists – something that can be seen in the gallery’s two-week summer exhibition featuring a multitude of artworks mostly exhibited over the past year. 

Art Corner’s summer collection offers a delightful mix of styles in different in shapes and sizes; from gigantic abstract pieces, to smaller, more intricate paintings.  

Perhaps the most prolific artist within this summer exhibition is Omar El Nagdi, with his delicately painted pieces mixed with bold lines and his signature gold frames. One of El Nagdi’s most remarkable pieces is an oil painting featuring Egyptians engaged in manual labour and wearing garments from different eras including the Pharonic era – a beautiful piece manifesting the working class in Egypt.      

Another particularly remarkable piece – and quite large in size – is one by Taher Abdel Azeem, in which he composes a beautiful portrait of Old Cairo during nighttime when the place seems to have a magical glow. Abdel Azeem is a special artist known to capture scenes at their best, emphasising them in all their glory and splendour using an expressive style of painting as well as a limited colour palette.

Laila Allam also has several pieces displayed in the summer collection, one of which boasts a unique and modern style of portraiture. Born in 1932, Allam is a noted sculptor and an art professor whose refined work has earned significant recognition. Allam paints women with special features ; big eyes, plump lips, fiery red hair; in fact it seems the features have the essence of caricatures, where the artist focuses on a particular human feature and then magnifies it in some way. The most interesting aspect of Allam’s paintings is that all the drawn faces appear to be of the same woman, which  stirs curiosity and a great deal of admiration to her style. .

Art Corner’s summer exhibition proves to be another successful and enjoyable celebration of some of Egypt’s most esteemed artists and it definitely offers a further insight into contemporary art.