full essay - Contemporary Practices

Essay107Mahmoud Saïd, El Zikr (esquisse), oil on board, 32.5x40cm., 1936. Nabil Nahas Collection, Beirut. Courtesy Agial Gallery, Beirut.Female nude paintings cover a relatively important part several times for Angelopoulo and Ezzat Ibrahim, mostof Saïd’s work. Working from private live nude models probably in the Greek painter’s studio. After Saïd’s death,was confined to his friends’ studios. This originally she was hired first as a model for the Faculty of Fineacademic training would have been impossible in his Arts of Alexandria, and later as a ‘Dada’ or servant forown house and an embarrassment in his aristocratic that same institution. This unpublished documentationmilieu. However, several unique photographs of those on Hamida provides a rare insight into Saïd’s socialfemale models have survived from artist Ezzat Ibrahim’s background and into his work environment as an artist.archives. Most of them have not yet been identified, The contrast between the model coming from the slumsalthough according to the artist Ismail Abdallah and and the artist painting her, who had been brought upto the sculptor Professor Gaber Hegazy, one of them in Alexandrian high society, was a means to connectportrays a girl called Hamida. Dr. Gaber Hegazy was with the people of his native land and to understandthe artist who made a cast of Saïd’s face and hand when more thoroughly their fascinating culture. It seemshe died, which are exhibited in the Mahmoud Saïd that Saïd sometimes dressed up his female models withMuseum. Hamida was paid 1/4 Egyptian pound per Western sophisticated clothes, as depicted in Nabouiahour and lived in El-Dhahriya, a slum in Alexandria. à l’imprimé (1952) and in La Fillette en rose (1945) .She was known for her voluptuous lips and she posed Both works seem to have been inspired by the models in