13 - ⊕ ‡ GEORGE BAHGOURY (EGYPTIAN/FRENCH B.1932)

⊕ ‡ GEORGE BAHGOURY (EGYPTIAN/FRENCH B.1932) UNTITLED signed and dated BAHGORY / 2010 lower right; signed Bahgoury in Arabic lower right mixed media on canvas 100.2 x 100.2cm (107.4 x 107.4cm framed) Property from a Private Collection, Paris Provenance Purchased from the artist's studio by the previous owner Acquired from the above by the present owner George Bahgoury is an internationally celebrated Egyptian-French artist, widely revered as the “Grandfather of Egyptian Caricature” and the "Picasso of Egypt." Born in 1932 in Upper Egypt, he moved to Cairo in 1951 to study fine arts under the legendary painter Hussein Bikar. By 1953, he had launched a formidable career as a political cartoonist, using a signature continuous one-line drawing style to inject sharp wit and satire into iconic publications like Rose El Youssef. In 1970, Bahgoury relocated to France to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris, eventually transitioning from commercial cartooning to full-time fine art. Over a multi-decade career spanning painting, sculpture, and literature, he developed a unique visual language that brilliantly fuses Western Cubism and Expressionism with Coptic heritage, Fayoum portraits, and Egyptian popular culture. His vibrant canvases frequently pay homage to cultural icons like Umm Kulthum, preserving a nostalgic collective memory of his homeland. Awarded Egypt's prestigious Prix d’Etat d’Excellence in 2006, Bahgoury has exhibited his work worldwide, including at the Louvre. Today, he divides his time between Paris and Cairo, continuing to build on a lifetime of visual storytelling documented in over 1,000 personal sketchbooks.