ALI FAHMI

Ali Fahmi (b. 1957) works and lives between Cairo and London. His artistic practice embraces various techniques, including watercolor, etching, charcoal, graphite, and oil painting. In 1982, Ali received his Masters degree in high energy physics from Brown University in Providence (USA) and further continued his research on the search for the mass of the “Higgs” boson in the Standard model of physics’ cosmology.

A self-taught artist, in 1987, he moved to Paris for a year during which, he began his exploration with watercolor and oils, while studying the great masters. His early influences began from Matisse to Cezanne extending to Delacroix, Rubens, Kandinsky, Michaux and later Willem De Kooning. He is also very influenced by the music of composers such as Pierre Boulez, Arnold Schoenberg, Bob Dylan and Metallica. In 1988, he moved back to Cairo where he began his practice of drawing and studying Cezanne and his major influence on modern painting. Since 1990, he has been farming bananas using biodynamic methods. Balaika, his farm, remains until today the gold standard for organic banana farming in Egypt.

Today, Ali Fahmi, while continuing to run his farm, focusses essentially on his artistic experimentation with oil painting.