24 - ‡ EVELYN ASHAMALLAH (EGYPTIAN B.1948)

‡ EVELYN ASHAMALLAH (EGYPTIAN B.1948) HARMONY OF BEINGS signed and dated Ashamallah 88 in Arabic lower centre oil on canvas 100 x 100cm (103 x 103cm framed) Sold with a Certificate of Authenticity issued by Easel & Camera Gallery, signed by the artist Provenance Acquired directly from the artist's studio by the present owner Evelyn Ashamallah is a prominent Egyptian contemporary painter and curator whose career spans over five decades. Born in Desouk in 1948, she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alexandria University in 1973. Following her graduation, she worked as a journalist for the progressive weekly magazine Rose el-Youssef and later relocated to Algeria for a period during the 1980s. As a core figure of the influential 1970s post-war generation of Egyptian artists, Ashamallah contributed to a pivotal cultural shift, steering the local art scene away from rigid social realism toward a distinct form of Egyptian surrealism. Beyond her studio practice, she has been a vital institutional leader, serving as the director of the Mohammed Nagy Museum (1993–1995) and the Egyptian Museum of Modern Art (2000–2002). Her enduring impact on regional modernism was honoured in 2024 with a major lifetime retrospective titled The Harvest of a Lifetime at Cairo’s Azad Art Gallery. Her creative process intentionally rejects rigid definitions and predefined blueprints, beginning each canvas without a formal layout to paint with absolute freedom. This methodology allows a single spark of imagination to dictate where the brush travels, resulting in a visual narrative where reality and fantasy freely blur. Ashamallah draws heavily from the landscape of her memory, the rich folk traditions of her upbringing in Desouk, Coptic iconography, and the vibrant communal rituals of Egyptian street celebrations like the Mawlid and Sham El-Nessim. Through vibrant colours, distorted proportions, and stacked compositions, she builds worlds where humans, plants, and animals hybridise. For her, art functions as an unceasing emotional response to life, populating her canvases with playful, magical beings that explore recurring themes of motherhood, femininity, and childhood innocence juxtaposed with the satire of adulthood. Through these painted stories, viewers are invited to decode her personal mythologies and reconstruct the narrative through the lens of their own perceptions.