Mahmoud Mukhtar: ‘The first sculptor from the land of sculpture’

Abstract

Considered Egypt's most prominent modern sculptor, Mahmoud Mukhtar (1891–1934) moved between Cairo and Paris throughout his career, blending a modern European sculptural aesthetic with ancient Egyptian imagery. The resulting oeuvre of work, and especially his masterpiece, Egypt's Reawakening (1920–28), provided the populace with a way to visually imagine the new Egyptian nation-state. Mukhtar's artwork reveals the transnational nature of the early twentieth-century art world and the consequential importance of the nation within that world.

Keywords:

• Mahmoud Mukhtar
• Egypt
• modernism
• nationalism
• public art
• Pharaonism
• École des Beaux-Arts
• sculpture

Notes on contributor

Alexandra Dika Seggerman completed her doctorate at Yale University, ‘Revolution and Renaissance in Modern Egyptian Art, 1880–1960.’ She conducted fieldwork in Cairo and Alexandria during 2011–12 as a US Department of State ECA Pre-doctoral Fellow at the American Research Center in Egypt.

Notes

1. Arabic: محمود مختار, His name has also been transliterated as Moukhtar, Mokhtar, and Mouktar.

2. Georges-Eugène Haussmann, known as Baron Haussmann, redesigned the urban center of Paris, destroying much of the medieval city in favor of wide boulevards, designed to prevent the barricades associated with social unrest.

3. A fatwa is a legal opinion or decree handed down by a Muslim religious leader.

4. The women in the photographs are not students – they are the models, hence their ease in being nude in the photographs.

5. Arabic: نهضة مصر.

6. A tarha is a veil similar to a Spanish mantilla and is traditionally worn by peasant women in the Egyptian Delta.

7. The actual identity and builder of the Sphinx of Giza is still debated, though it is often said to be the visage of Khafre, the builder of the Pyramid directly behind it.