Zakaria El-Zeiny (1932-1993)

One of the icons of the Egyptian art movement, his works were characterized by a uniqueness and a mark that preceded his time. His surfaces, on which Egyptian themes and issues of passion and identity were fused, were a wonderful mixture between abstraction, the dominant school of his style and feeling, and expressionism, which he used in many of his paintings, through highly summarized faces and symbols, to facilitate the recipient’s access to his idea and message from the work, while leaving vast spaces for interpretation, deletion, and addition, according to each recipient.
Al-Zaini holds a diploma from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo, Department of Photography, 1960, a diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, Department of Photography, 1964, a diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Department of Mural Painting, 1966, and a member of many artistic associations in Egypt and abroad. He held several positions, including professor and head of the Department of Photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts – Helwan University, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts for Education and Student Affairs, and worked as head of the Department of Photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Minya. During his career, he presented and participated in dozens of exhibitions and artistic events locally and internationally. His career was crowned with many awards and honors, most notably the first prize (photography) at the Alexandria Biennale 1991. He has works owned by entities and individuals in Egypt, the Arab world, Europe and America. His upbringing in the Sayeda Zeinab district left a clear impact on the artist’s visual and cultural perspective, which is clearly evident in the stages his artistic career went through, which he called the Mawlid, the Zar, and other aspects of popular celebrations, then the garbage stage in the eighties in rejection of this phenomenon that had worsened at that time, then the masks stage and other stages that included many societal and human topics, all of which were tinged with a philosophical touch, and a sophisticated and unusual approach, and presented the burden of his deep understanding, and his great concern for people’s issues, which was reflected in his boldness in expressing them, with the utmost honesty, creating for each case its own highly balanced pictorial environment, in terms of the formative structure, and the artistic and aesthetic sense.