Lot 164: Collage

Mounir Canaan (Egyptian, 1919-1999)
Collage
signed, titled and dated 'Canaan 97 COLLAGE' and signed, titled and dated in Arabic (on the reverse)
collage of printed material on card
37¾ x 45½in. (96 x 106cm.)
Executed in 1997

Paris, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris
Cairo, Museum of Modern Art, Retrospective of the artist, June 2001

During the 1980s and into the 1990s, Mounir Canaan's work demonstrates his fascination with cardboard boxes. He would open them up and unfold them, manipulating them as if searching for hidden secrets. The shredded card and the sound of paper ripping to Canaan is reminiscent of the textures and sounds of delicious crisply baked bread. Hence Canaan's images formed from such ripped and shredded card have a kind of primitive intuitiveness.