Al Ahram Newspaper

Walls talk
in Mahmoud El-Maghraby's Exhibition

Boushari Art Gallery held an exhibition for the Egyptian plastic artist Mahmoud El-Maghraby under the patronage of the Egyptian Ambassador Abdel-Rahim Shalaby.

The Exhibition contains various works of zincography that demonstrate in general an artistic excellence and strong presentation of the place, history and public spirit.

It is known that zincography is one of the most difficult arts and require a great effort and persistence as well as deed creative vision. The etching depends on a metal plate of Zinc by using acids, needle or chesil of various shapes. After finishing the etching, the artist prepares his deep lines and prints them in order to get the printed on paper due to the strong pressure of the printing machine.

Mahmoud El-Maghraby loves this difficult art since his artistic beginning, excels in it and possesses its tools in a way that enables him to express on the plates of Zinc and other slid metals that can be etched his imaginations, conceptions, ideas and field experiences in coming up with new methods to produce etched plate full of public rhythm.

When the artist Mahmoud El-Maghraby held his first exhibition when he was sophomore in the faculty of fine Arts he choose for it the cultural palace in the public district of Rod El-Farag north of Cairo. This selection indicators an early belonging and royalty for the place which public and rich of life, meanings, pains, sad nesses and dreams.

In all his later artworks, the public theme dominates his plate with different expressions. In some of his plates in this exhibition, he inspires the public wall with its life improvisations where the deep splits merge with inherited myths and Arabic letters in its public image full of meanings and symbols. Walls in the Egyptian public culture mean a lot as a way to get free the social, political and human suppressed, the place transfigurations and the myth dignity and pride.

What is applied on public walls in El-Maghraby's plate is applied also on iron doors repeated in some plates in the exhibition. The iron door dazzles the eyes by its magnificent presentation as a deceptive symbol for safety and indicates the place aesthetic in the public life. El-Maghraby uses sometimes the printing cast in a unique way where the iron door reappears in another plate to show other meanings to ascertain this deceptive meaning.

Mahmoud El-Maghraby is a promising youth artist and participates in several exhibitions in Cairo and Kuwait . His plates are in the collections of Modern Art Museum in Cairo and private collections I Egypt, Kuwait and USA .

He won the prize of special arbitration committee for zincography in eleventh youth salon in 2001 at palace of arts in the Egyptian Opera House.

The Artist Mahmoud El-Maghraby says about zincography that it is a difficult and enjoyable art at the same time because of the tools and materials used in it such as sharp tools and chemical liquids. However, it depends on imagination, creation and deep vision of things. Thee artist finds in it a mirror which reflects his feelings, sensations and the method of diving in human issues inhabited with questions about self, identity and reality across works depending on geometry of shapes, lines and etching.

4th of June 2005