Hamed Owais, The Harvest
02 Paintings, MIDDLE EASTERN ART, With Footnotes — 19
The Harvest (Al-Hasadh), c. 2009
Oil on canvas, framed
40 x 54cm (15 3/4 x 21 1/4in).
Private collection
Mohammed Hamed Owais was born in 1919 into a peasant family in the small village of Kafr Mansour in the governorate of Beni Soueif, Egypt. There, he received his primary and secondary education before working as a metalworker. He moved to Cairo, where he joined the School of Fine Arts. After he graduated in 1944, he pursued his studies at the Institute of Art Education in Cairo. He received his diploma in 1946 and in the following year, he founded the Group of Modern Art, together with other artists of his generation.
From 1948 to 1955, Owais worked as a drawing teacher in the Farouk Ist Secondary School in Alexandria. He traveled to Italy in 1952 and visited the Venice Biennial. He was appointed a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria just after it was founded. In 1967, Owais received a scholarship to continue his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. From 1977 to 1979, he served as the head of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria. He died in Cairo in 2011, at the age of ninety-two.