Contemporary artist Ahmed Farid adds social value to art

CAIRO – 29 August 2017: Humanity faces many critical problems in all contemporary societies nowadays like the gap among the social classes pushing many contemporary artists including the Egyptian contemporary artist Ahmed Farid to tackle them through their paintings. Egypt Today sheds light on one of the successful Egyptian contemporary artists as he introduces new values to the scene.

Farid was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1950 where he currently lives and works as a business man, he thinks of art as a valued hobby.

Because of his extensive travels in early 1970s to different places, he began to discover his eagerness towards art. Consequently, he was self-taught art through spending several hours training at studios belonging to famous artists.

He traveled to different places around the world such as Italy, France and England in search for different techniques he could use while painting till he encountered the abstract paintings of New York art school, well-known in 20th century, Farid explained to Egypt Today on Tuesday.

As a result of his aspiring journey, most of his paintings are a blend of American paintings and Egyptian aspects, defining artistic creation of Farid unique approach in the contemporary scene. The ambitious artist follows the technique of New York art school in which he focuses on certain Egyptian social issues

“I am influenced greatly by Willem de Kooning, Gazebia Sirry and Nicholas de Steal in their way of painting,” Farid told Egypt Today as he was stating his inspirations.

His dynamic and fully colorful paintings usually display abstract slim images of distant shadows and shy characters as he wants to focus on the reality rather than features of people. In efforts to implement this aspiring notion, he followed the techniques of New York art school that matched his artistic goals.

For example, in his first exhibition named ‘Urbanization’, he wanted to introduce the contrast between the rich and the poor as means of promoting a famous social issue in Egypt, and hence he drew the shadow characters and used many colors and motion to present the contrast among social classes, highlighted Farid.

“The paintings are understandable and abstract in which each person could understand it differently whenever he/she looks at it,” Farid emphasized.



Urbanization painting – Official Website


His painting Metropolis Magic painted in 2016 was auctioned at the Christie's Auctions in May 2017where it reached $18,750.





Metropolis Magic – Official Website