Ragheb Ayyad (1882-1982)

An artist from the generation of pioneers and a pioneer of the realist school in modern Egyptian art.

He joined the College of Fine Arts when it opened in 1908. He worked as an art education teacher after his graduation.

He was sent on a mission to study art in Rome, Italy, in 1925. He held an exhibition of his works in Rome in 1929.

He taught art in Italy.

He held many positions in the Colleges of Fine Arts and Applied Arts from 1930 to 1950

Ragheb Ayyad was appointed director of the Museum of Modern Art in 1950. He received the State Appreciation Award in Arts in 1965.

The artist Ragheb Ayyad was influenced by many influences that contributed to his artistic and intellectual maturity. Ayyad is considered one of the artists whose drawings were characterized by boldness and freedom, while the artists of his time followed the traditional approach to drawing and were unable to transcend it. We also find that he followed an approach characterized by expressionism linked to Egyptian origins, so he told Afrah the countryside.

Despite Ragheb Ayyad’s foreign artistic culture, he was distinguished by portraying Egyptian life in a style close to the realistic school, where it was linked to what the ancient Egyptian arts had achieved and what popular life and its artistic symbols had achieved.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the idea of ​​​​establishing the Royal Academy of Arts germinated in the mind of the young photographer Ragheb Ayyad. He was an envoy in Rome at the expense of Prince Youssef Kamel when he noticed the interest of many European countries in establishing academies for their young artists in Rome, where they would find a place for their creativity and nurture their talents under supervision. Artists.