Bain des chevaux à Rosette (1950) by MAHMOUD SAIDDalloul Art Foundation
Egyptian artist Mahmoud Said was born into Alexandrian high society in 1897 and grew up with the privileges and constraints of a young aristocrat.
At the same time, he was privately tutored in foreign languages, music, and the visual arts. In these private art classes, he demonstrated a talent for drawing, and subsequently studied under the tutelage of the Italian painter Amelia Daforno Casonato.
As the Egyptian writer and poet Ahmed Rassem (1895-1958) has asserted, the Alexandrian painter was more interested in exploring the properties of light than he was in producing stereotyped views of the pyramids or folkloric images from the Cairo souk.
In his work, Said aimed to evoke the spiritual dimension of cultural heritage by imbuing his scenes with a luminous glow. “What I’m looking for is radiance rather than light,” the artist explained in 1927
In Le Bain des Chevaux à Rosette the artist captures this exact moment when the rain stops and the first beams of the sun pierce the clouds, creating a soft, silvery light hat contrasts the blue cobalt of the sky and the white on the sails as well as the skin of the animals.
The sea itself seems like a source of light, as its waves absorb and reflect it in endless variations.
From the full biography of Mahmoud Said by Arthur Debsi
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