Mahmoud Moukhtar was born May 10, 1891, in the small Nile Delta village of Nasha. From a very early age his only hobby was to sit by the canal and make small mud sculptures of horses, camels and peasants. He would then put these sculptures in the oven to dry; later contemplating them which spurred him towards producing more. He later moved to Cairo, near Abdeen, where he began his schooling.
On 13 May, 1908, Prince Youssef Kamel inaugurated the School of Fine Arts in Darb El Gammamiz, where Moukhtar was one of its first students. In 1910 the school held an exhibition of the students’ work and Moukhtar's sculptures were highly praised. In 1911, he was granted a scholarship to study art at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. During his stay in France, he befriended members of the Egyptian Wafd Party and was inspired to create the prototype for his most famous statue, Nahdet Misr (Egyptian Awakening), which was initially unveiled in Ramses Square in Cairo in 1928 and now stands opposite the Cairo University Bridge.
In Paris his works were admired by his professor, who told him, "you will be a great artist in your country." Indeed, Moukhtar has since been recognized as the father of modern Egyptian sculpture. After three years Moukhtar returned to Egypt and began producing magnificent monumental sculptures such as Saad Zaghloul, The Emancipation of Egypt, The Resistance, Queen of Sheba and the numerous renditions of the fellaha (female peasant) who remained his only muse until the end of his life. The Moukhtar Museum in Cairo, where his sculptures were neglected for years, was finally restored and reopened to the public in October 2003. His work also features as part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization inaugurated in February 2017.
Courtesy of Safarkhan Gallery, Cairo
