Yours sincerely
 
 

Michel Santi                                                                   Christian-Marc Keller
Founder                                                                           Founder
 
 
 

                                                     

 
The artistic movement “Art et Liberté” is a little-known chapter in the aesthetic struggles and the political activism in Egypt between 1938 and 1948. Rallying behind the Egyptian Surrealist poets Georges Henin and Albert Cossery’s 1937 manifesto “Long Live Degenerate Art,” which stood in opposition to Hitler’s attack on modern art in Munich, the group considered Surrealism a natural artistic expression of contemporary issues outside of Fascism, Communism, and Capitalist ideology.

It defined its mission as making art that would be a vehicle for social change. In that way, they aligned themselves with André Breton and Leon Trotsky’s 1938 manifesto “For an Independent Revolutionary Art.” At the same time—like their counterparts in Eastern Europe and Latin America—they insisted that Egyptian Surrealism had native roots in folk tales and crafts as well as in Coptic religious art. Out of this, “Art et Liberté” evolved its own definition of Surrealism, believing that, in addition to being an art movement, its fundamental mission was “social and moral revolution.” The painter Ramses Younane, for example, wanted to take Surrealism beyond Dalí and Magritte, whose work he considered too self-conscious, too calculated, and too limited in scope to allow for spontaneous imagination.


                                                     


Pioneering women in the group like Amy Nimr made feminism a central concern. In a Cairo within the orbit of war, under British colonial occupation by 140,000 troops, a rising Fascist ideology debated the values of democracy, which became a major preoccupation of artists and writers. “Art et Liberté” gave Egypt a major intellectual and artistic legacy. Out of this group emerged some of Egypt’s leading modern artists, including, Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, Hamed Nada, and Samir Rafi. Therefore, “Art et Liberté” gives a unique perspective on the historical and cultural complexity—the artistic, intellectual, and political life of a culture.