Ibrahim Shahda

Ibrahim Shahda (2 October 1929 – 28 August 1991) was an Egyptian-born French figurative painter.

Biography Born in Al-Azizya, Egypt, Shahda studied at the Cairo Fine Arts Academy in 1947, aged 18. He worked with French professor and painter Pierre Beppi-Martin. In 1955, three years after ending his studies, he won a Prize and organized his first exhibition. At the end of the same year, he decided to leave for Paris.

He applied as free student to the École des Beaux-Arts. He moved to the south of France, in Carpentras, but frequently traveled to Paris.

A first personal exhibition took place in 1958 at the Arlette Chabaud Gallery in Avignon. He won the Painting Prize from the Avignon Festival with La femme en noir, today part of the Fondation Calvet collection (Calvet Museum). He also won the Aix-en-Provence Painting Prize the same year. A second exhibition, shared with his friend Paul Surtel, was organized in Carpentras (Chapelle du Collège) in 1960.

In 1962, unhappy with his work, he chose to return to Paris. In 1963 he visited Italy, then Brittany. In 1966, he returned to Provence, but spent several summers in Brittany.

The following decade saw him visit Belgium, Netherlands, Spain and Italy, and show his work in Paris (Egypt Cultural Center), in Avignon (Ducastel Gallery), in Carpentras (Town-Hall) and in Marseille. During each trip he visited museums and admired the great masters.

In 1975, Shahda fell seriously ill. He kept on painting, but felt threatened: "One must snatch work from passing time.". During a long remission, he worked on portraits - including those of fellow artists such as painter Michel Bonnaud or writer Pierre Autin-Grenier - and self-portraits, oil or pastel drawing.

Two exhibitions took place in Carpentras in 1981 and 1984. His health deteriorated again in 1985, but he kept on working harder than ever: still lifes, self-portraits and, despite illness and exhaustion, landscapes.

He died from cancer during the summer of 1991 in Aix-en-Provence hospital.

His widow, Anita, organized many posthumous exhibitions, in Paris, in various Provence towns, in Montpellier and in Ajaccio. She worked for years on a monograph which was published in 2014.

Work The Fondation Calvet in Avignon owns two paintings by Shahda, La Femme en noir from 1958 and a Self-portrait from the late 70s.

The Auberive Abbey and Musée Comtadin-Duplessis in Carpentras also host some of his work.

His style is highly personal, but has a clear link with some great painters of the past (Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Goya, Velázquez, Titian and Tintoretto, or van Gogh, Cézanne, Modigliani and Soutine), as well as two of his contemporaries, Zoran Mušič and Francis Bacon, by the strength of his portraits and the refusal of abstract art.

Artists like painters Lucie Geffré and Ronan Barrot and sculptor Marc Petit have been influenced by Shahda's work.

Exhibitions 1958: Galerie Arlette Chabaud, Avignon 1960: Chapelle du Collège, Carpentras (exhibition with Paul Surtel) 1964: Musée Lapidaire, Carpentras 1966: Galerie Ducastel, Avignon 1967: Musée Lapidaire, Carpentras 1969: Centre Culturel d'Egypte, Paris 1971: Galerie Ducastel, Avignon 1971: Galerie Lucy Krohg, Paris 1972: Hôtel de Ville, Carpentras 1974: Galerie Ducastel, Avignon 1974: National Fair Club, Marseille 1975: Galerie Ducastel, Avignon 1981: Musée Duplessis and Chapelle du Collège, Carpentras 1984: La Charité, Carpentras

Posthumous exhibitions 1993: Chapelle du Collège, Carpentras 1994: Musée Municipal, Alès 1995: Château de Malijay, Jonquières 1998: Galerie Doudou Bayol, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence 1998: Ferme des Arts, Vaison-la-Romaine 1998: Centre Culturel d'Egypte, Paris 1999: Espace Saint-Louis, Avignon 2000: Chapelle du Grozeau, Malaucène 2003: Galerie Artset, Limoges 2006: Chapelle du Collège, Carpentras 2009: Galerie Polad-Hardouin, Paris 2011: Galerie Anna-Tschopp, Marseille 2011: Galerie Ardital, Aix-en-Provence 2012: Galerie de l'Ecusson, Montpellier 2013: Lazaret Ollandini, Musée Marc Petit, Ajaccio 2014: Imprimerie Rimbaud, Cavaillon, for the monograph publication

Publications 1984: Magazine Rencontres, #124 2005: Magazine Azart, #17 2009: Exhibition catalog at Polad-Hardouin Gallery, Ibrahim Shahda, La Rinascita 2009: Magazine Vernissages, #5, Ibrahim Shahda, Chronique d'une Survie 2014: Shahda, monograph, by Anita Shahda

Illustrations Pierre Autin-Grenier, Élodie Cordou, une présence, Éditions du Chemin de fer, 2015; with paintings by Ibrahim Shahda