Youssef Kamel (1890-1971) Roma 1927 - Egyptian Painter

Youssef KAMEL (1890-1971)

Oil on panel signed lower left Y. Kamel and dated 1927. Situated in Rome.

The panel measures 50.4 x 67.5 cm. The frame measures 65 x 83 cm.

Biography :

Among the first students to enter the Cairo School of Fine Arts in 1908, Youssef Kamel was part of a generation of Egyptian modernist artists often referred to as the Al-Ruwwad Group (The Pioneer Group). He studied with the Italian painter Paolo Forcella and worked alongside influential Egyptian artists such as Ragheb Ayad and Mahmoud Mokhtar. In 1925, Kamel received a scholarship to attend the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. He studied with Umberto Coromaldi who, like Forcella, followed the nineteenth-century Italian Macchiaioli movement, focusing on oil painting techniques that emphasised points of light in nature. Kamel transfers this attention to light and colour through soft brushstrokes in his landscapes and portraits. He returned to Cairo in 1929 to work as a painting teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts.