Said Yassin (Cairo)
“Whenever I find myself losing the ability to fly in space, I paint a painting.” This is how the plastic artist, poet and heritage researcher Mahmoud Al-Shanqrabi summarizes his journey with creativity in general, and painting in particular, as he can sit on the painting for long hours during which he is separated from the outside world, which is He believes that drawing and the like is a beautiful art that keeps its owner away from obsessive thoughts and negative impressions. Al-Shanqrabi is participating in the group exhibition “People of the River” in Cairo, with about 18 paintings.
popular culture
In the paintings of the exhibition, Al-Shanqrabi used a mixture of popular culture, as he focused on drawing the popular neighborhood in which he was born, and its name is “Al-Shanqrabi”, and he is attributed to him, and he worked on merging it with the Pharaonic and African style.
Al-Shanqrabi said that his love for art extends back to his childhood through the tales of grandmothers in Aswan in the fifties and sixties of the last century, about girls who were kidnapped by the “fairies” of the river, and the huge knight who stands on the western mountain of the Nile in the lunar nights to fight them, which contributed to creating imaginary inspirations that he translated. In his works, most of which contain many knights, horses, brides, and jars filled with girls and women from the Nile.
In terms of colors and their beauty, the Egyptian artist was also influenced by the calligraphy of a number of artistic publications, which made his colors clear and explicit without mixing or hybridization. , and abstract that contains a hint of surrealism.
Mahmoud Al-Shanqrabi pointed out that he does not find that there are any differences between his participation in group or individual exhibitions, as he participated in more than 170 joint exhibitions and 14 private exhibitions, and he believes that plastic art and poetry are two sides of the same coin.
Regarding his vision as a researcher in heritage, he believes that heritage is ramified, and whenever it is excavated, we find what dazzles us and what no one might imagine, and that the first thing that drew his attention to heritage was the culture of the fifties of the last century, of which he lived a part, and then he found that it fades and decays, which is what He invited him to record many things about it in his book “Mahmoud Al-Shanqrabi’s Blogs”, where he recorded the shape of the houses and the methods of ventilation in them, and children’s games and songs that differed between girls and boys. Some critics and historians have praised that book and demanded that it be translated into other languages.
The new wave
Mahmoud Al-Shanqrabi benefited from the social media, and said that this new technical wave added to plastic art, caricature arts, and many other positives, and about himself, it made an important shift in his artistic experience. Before he had an account on the communication sites ten years ago, only those close to him knew him. He included artists, critics, and friends, but displaying his works through them achieved a much wider spread than he had achieved in his previous sixty years.
Al-Shanqrabi also participated in the virtual exhibition organized by the Arab Academy of Fine Arts / Art Forum in America, and some of his paintings won in it, and therefore he confirms that awards and honorary certificates bear the artist a great and double responsibility, especially since any artist seeks to reach the top, despite the difficulty of maintaining it. Where he has reached a degree of the quality of his work, and the critics’ view of it has become entrenched, and he has received praise and approval from the audience, and therefore he seeks after that not to be less than the desired level.
