Lot 13: The Seller of Lupines

Kamel Moustafa (Egyptian, 1917-1982)
The Seller of Lupines
signed 'K. Moustafa' (lower right)
oil on canvas
19 x 28½in. (48.5 x 72.5cm.)
Painted in 1954

Alexandria, First Mediterranean Biennial, 1954

Colection of the artist

FROM AN EGYPTIAN PRIVATE COLLECTION

In his early period, Kamel Moustafa depicted scenes of Cairo and the Nile in an impressionist style. This changed, however, when he left for his period of study in Italy. There he was exposed to various trends, including post-impressionism other modernist styles.
By the beginning of the 1950s he had absorbed these and his work during that decade passed through a distinctly modernist phase, where compostion and execution were carefully controlled. As with many artists in Egypt working just after the Revolution, he turned to depicting scenes of Egyptian popular culture, endowing them with a new nobility. This painting embodies this modernist period in Moustafa's work.