Ahmed Morsi: A Dialogic Imagination

Overview

After coming of age in the 1940s as part of the Alexandria School, a movement led by free thinkers and artists that marked the city’s emergence as a postwar Mediterranean cultural entrepot, Ahmed Morsi spent time in Baghdad before moving to Cairo in the 1960s and eventually immigrating to York in the 1970s. A painter, poet, printmaker, and critic, Morsi has created a diverse body of work abundant in mythic beauty. The Cairo journal he helped lead in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Galerie 68, became the voice of the Egyptian avant-garde, and he has also experimented with theatrical set design and artist’s books.

This volume highlights the rich interplay between Morsi’s poetry and paintings and emphasises the way his multivalent practice conducts a dialogue with the wider world. Newly commissioned scholarly essays, commentaries from his contemporaries, selections from the artist’s own writings, an interview with the artist, and numerous photographs and reproductions capture the vibrancy and impact of Morsi’s prolific career. Also included are an extensive exhibition history, bibliography, and career chronicle.

Ahmed Morsi: A Dialogic Imagination is edited by Hoor Al Qasimi and Salah M. Hassan, and includes contributions from them. Their texts are joined by a new scholarly reading of Morsi’s work by Dina Ramadan, Assistant Professor of Arabic and Director of Middle Eastern Studies at Bard College, and new translations of writings on Morsi by Edwar al-Kharrat and Samir Gharib, two of his life-long collaborators as well as contributions and poems from Morsi, and a recent interview between him and Hassan.