Hanafy Mahmoud

Born in 1970, al-Wady al-Gadid, Egypt. Lives and works in Cairo, Egypt. The work of Hanafy Mahmoud demonstrates the artist’s deeply felt engagement with some of the central issues of existence and the meaning of life. Fundamental to his art is the close observation of the sensual and psychological dimensions of the human kind. The paintings consist of life size individual figures or groups of men and women, often nude, set against dream-like backgrounds. “It is truly most amazing, there is a reason for everything. If speech was silver, if silence was gold, If tears were flames, and humility decorum; You would be right to be amazed, and for that deserve no blame.” From the quatrains of the Egyptian man of letters Salah Jahin. “Many faces moving here and there in a mass of expressions and silent eyes. Faces frowning but expressing intensely what thoughts are going on inside this external border. This deep-seated silence which at the same time is intensely and loudly expressive occupies me a great deal and affects me and I am influenced by it. The prime source of my inspiration in my works is the human condition and the events which surround it. The crowded street, public transport, packed with silent, frowning faces filled with expressions of refusal and objection and discontent, this affects me. Everything to do with the social, political or economic situation of man. Humanity is pivotal to my works and my concerns.

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