Ibrahim El Dessouki (b. 1969), Doors and False Doors 5, 2021 

Oil on canvas 

185.5 x 120 cm

Price: £77,000 inc. VAT (plus any applicable taxes) 

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Born in Cairo, Egypt in 1969, Ibrahim El Dessouki descends from a family of artists as his father Fahmi El Dessouki and mother Atyat Sayed were well-known and established Egyptian expressionist painters and free-thinking intellectuals, and both greatly influenced the artist that Ibrahim has become. 

Dessouki’s painting style is defined by his unique treatment of paint, which concentrates on his ability to create subtle changes in its texture; his unusual use of negative space; and his deft manipulation of shadow and light. While the artist’s painting genres encompass portraiture, landscape and still life, Dessouki’s subject matter is very much Egypt-centric capturing his own unique and hypnotic perspective of the soul and essence of Egypt. 

Dessouki is famous for his paintings of women; some of those paintings express his nostalgia for the women who strolled in his neighborhood when he was a child with their ample bodies hardly covered with a graceful shawl. His paintings of women are simple yet rich with grace and softness; his style is as pleasing to the eye and elegant as his subject matters. 

Graduated from Helwan University with a BA in Fine Arts in Cairo 1992, obtained MA on “The London School and British Painting since 1945” in 1997 and a PhD on “Dynamics in painting” in 2003, Dessouki has exhibited widely in both the Middle East and Europe, including an exhibition at Bousheri Gallery (Kuwait, 2012), Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris, 2008) and Casa Arabe (Madrid, 2014). His work was also featured in Cairo International Biennale, and included in the collections of the Egyptian Museum of Modern Art and the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art in Qatar.