Egypt

About

After the age of the pharaohs, Egypt remained a major artistic centre. Coptic Christians wove wool-and-linen textiles with lively figures, and under the Fatimids and Mamluks Cairo gained carved stone mosques, enamelled glass lamps and inlaid metalwork.

A modern Egyptian art took shape in the early 20th century. The School of Fine Arts opened in Cairo in 1908, and Mahmoud Mokhtar's granite monument Egypt's Awakening, unveiled in 1928, joined a peasant woman with a sphinx. In the late 1930s the Art and Freedom group brought Surrealism to Cairo, and in the 1940s Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar painted mystical, folk-inspired scenes. The architect Hassan Fathy revived mud-brick building for rural housing. Gazbia Sirry and Effat Naghi developed personal forms of modernism across long careers. Contemporary artists include Ghada Amer, who embroiders on canvas, Hassan Khan, who works with sound and video, and Susan Hefuna, whose drawings echo latticed mashrabiya screens.