Lot 65: HUSSEIN BICAR (EGYPTIAN, 1912-2002) Untitled (Incense) signed and dated in

HUSSEIN BICAR (EGYPTIAN, 1912-2002) Untitled (Incense) signed and dated in Arabic (lower left) oil on panel 31¼ x 23?in. (79.5 x 60cm) Painted in 1992

PROVENANCE: Dr. Ahmed Abu Zekri Collection, Egypt. Acquired from the above by the present owner. LITERATURE: S. Al-Sharouny, Bicar: Hussein Bicar The Artist of the Left (in Arabic), Cairo 2002 (sketch illustrated in colour, p. 109). The late Egyptian artist Hussein Bicar led an illustrious and long career not only as an artist, but as an academician teaching art in public schools throughout Egypt and at his alma mater the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo, in addition to being an illustrator-turned journalist for the Egyptian Arabiclanguage daily Akhbar El Youm. Originally from Alexandria, Bicar settled in Cairo enrolling at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo where he would receive rigorous training from both Egyptian and Italian faculty, including the Egyptian artists Ahmed Sabri and Youssef Kamel. Bicar’s love and fascination with the Nubian people and the region of Nubia originated in his experience in the south of Egypt when he was sent to Qena by the Education Ministry to teach in a local public school. Bicar has said ‘there was nothing unfamiliar about the milieu. I started to know the real Egypt. Egypt is not Cairo, not even the northern towns and villages. No, it lies there in the depths of the south where the relics of the Pharaohs are to be found. Even the faces [of villagers in the south] feel genuine.’ (The artist quoted in S. Sharouny, Hussein Bicar, Cairo 2002, p. 54). His love for what he deemed to be the original Egypt– untouched and uncontaminated by foreign infuence of any sort be it cultural, social or intellectual– inspired much of his focus and dedication to the people and landscape of Nubia. It is Nubia where many antiquities of the Ancient Egyptian period are to be found, and where Bicar felt the original spirit and culture of Egypt remained, embedded into the rocks and landscape of the region. The present work entitled Incense is unlike others from the series in which Bicar painted fgures from Nubia. Departing from his usual focus on scenes of musical instruments and dance, he focuses on a more traditional object: the incense burner. The woman is portrayed brandishing a small incense burner, moving in fuid motion. A plume of smoke rises from the burner which she is carrying gracefully with one hand, as her other is outstretched in a gesture. Long and lithe, the arms of his female fgure suggest the beauty and elegance of a ballet dancer poised in mid-choreography. Watching this woman is a male subject who is seated beneath her on the ground. His posture and position is no less elegant or seemingly posed than hers: his hands appear to rest casually on his folded knees, but he too is part of the spectacle taking place. Yet, there is great theatre at play here in this scene. Whether the incense was carried to be dispersed around him as a method of warding evil spirits away from the male subject– as was the tradition in Egyptian folkloric culture– or simply a prop in the dance remains unknown. The plumes of smoke appear like a painted backdrop, but the background and foreground are interlaced vis-à-vis the smoke which is painted in varying degrees of whites, and greys. The smoke and subjects are intertwined, as another plume of white smoke is conjoined with the turban of the male subject who looks to his female counterpart. The female subject is smiling, with a coquettish half smile directed at her male counterpart. Her clothes are as simple as those Bicar paints for his other female subjects: a long robe with bell sleeves, a shawl on her head, and gold ornamentation adorns her forehead and ears. The geometrically abstracted stylisation of her clothes help to defne the curve of a thigh, and the length of her torso, but never in a vulgar or crude manner. For Bicar, women were beautiful objects to be revered, not fetishized in a vulgar manner. Bicar was considered to be a great portraitist for his deft ability to illustrate women, and it was his love for the female fgure and form which he dedicated himself to recording so often in his work. Always in a respectful manner, modesty of dress was adhered to in his subjects’ clothes; but it was the elegance of his drawing of a linear outline of the female fgure that undeniably simply illustrated how he loved painting the female form; he thus demanded viewers looking at his work to admire the women he drew. Wearing robes with colour of the deepest saturation of blues, greens, pinks and purples to become a focal point of his compositions, men were depicted wearing plain white clothes, their presence intended to be secondary in importance to that of the women in his work. A captivating piece, Incense displays Bicar’s mastery command of tone and colour. Using an understated colour palette his ability to balance a whole composition on fve colours– red, white, black, ochre, and grey– demonstrates the care which he took to compose this painting.