(1917-2018)
He was born in Cairo and graduated from the Higher School of Applied Arts, Photography Department, in 1937.
The pioneer of pastel art, in which he excelled and became unmatched, Mohamed Sabry’s art is of the type belonging to influential realism, his paintings represent popular neighborhoods and landscapes in Old Cairo and Aswan and in the Spanish and Moroccan regions using pastel colors that he owned and controlled to achieve his purposes in shaping the aesthetic values he seeks without effort, hesitation or ambiguity.
The only Egyptian artist to be a member of the oldest and most prestigious academies in the world, the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, he was among the great artists for his artistic status and not only this honor, but he was appointed a lifetime academic member of the Royal Academy of San Carlos in Valencia, Spain.
He held the first private exhibition of his paintings at the Goldenberg Salon in Cairo in 1943, and won the first prize in photography at the artistic literary festival organized by the Ministry of Public Education in 1948.
Many museums and official institutions own his work, including the National Museum of Modern Art in Cairo, the Museum of Fine Arts in Valencia, Spain, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Granada, Spain, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the National Bank of Egypt.
He chronicled with his paintings the most important historical events that Egypt went through in painting (the painting of the Battle of Port Said) in 1956, which is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, (the painting of the High Dam) in 1966, which is in the collection of the Supreme Soviet Council in Russia, and (the painting of the Great Crossing) in 1973, which is in the collection of the Abdeen Palace Museum.
He was awarded the Knight of Merit by the Spanish government in 1961, the Order of Queen Isabel by the King of Spain in 1988, and the State Appreciation Award in the Arts by Egypt in 1988.