5 - CHANT AVEDISSIAN (EGYPTIAN 1951-2018)

CHANT AVEDISSIAN (EGYPTIAN 1951-2018) UM KULTHUM signed CHANT AVEDISSIAN lower middle; inscribed Al-Qāhirah in Arabic lower middle gouache, stencil and metallic paint on card 47.3 x 67.2cm (60.6 x 80.6cm framed) Property from a Private Collection, Edenbridge, Kent Provenance Acquired from the artist's studio by the present owner in 2006 see note to lot 4 The master of Egyptian Pop Art, Chant Avedissian fuses commercial popular culture and traditional arts in his iconic commentaries on the world around him. Avedissian was born in Cairo to an Armenian refugee family. After studying abroad at the School of Art and Design in Montreal and applied arts at the National Higher School of Decorative Arts in Paris, the artist begun a career in costume and textiles. However, in 1991, a friend commissioned him to create a portrait of renowned Egyptian singer Um Kalthoum (his most celebrated work). To the world, Um Kulthum is Kawkab el-Sharq (the Star of the East) her voice a force that once brought whole nations to a standstill on the first Thursday of every month. This inspired his Icons of the Nile series, which sought to capture the culture, romance and glamour of mid-twentieth century cosmopolitan Egypt through portraits of influential Egyptian figures. Sourced from popular magazine imagery, Avedissian combined his stencils with a cultural and historical traditional visual language including Ottoman patterns and hieroglyphics alongside local imagery including bus tickets and birds and worked exclusively in local materials such as Egyptian corrugated cardboard. Avedissian’s devotion to handicraft, tradition and everyday experience in his artistic depictions of the cult of celebrity and the media-age sets his works distinctly apart from the aesthetics of mass-production which characterised American Pop Art. Avedissian repeats the process, yet no two prints are identical. The technique echoes modern pop art, but its heart belongs entirely to the Nile. By transforming the grand diva into a repeated stencil, he isn't diminishing her power; he is democratising her legacy. He turns a national monument into a living symbol, a nostalgic icon, bridging the gap between Egypt’s majestic past and its restless present.